Disharmony
by Archontor
Summary: During Harmonic Convergence, when the world needed her most, Avatar Korra was struck down. Fourteen years later humanity faces extinction at the hands of the Dark Avatar Unalaq and marauding spirits. In a world of permanent twilight a brave group of refugees renegades and mercenaries must face perilous odds to turn back the darkness that threatens to consume the world. AU fic.
1. Chapter 1: Journey of a Thousand Miles

An airship ducked out of the sky and into the mountains around the Western air temple with the warped black figure of a dark spirit sweeping across the sky behind them. The chaotically assembling and disassembling spots of light that were the spirits eyes slowly began to focus on the airship. The Western air temple had seen better days, even the most dedicated acolytes didn't often brave upside down, rain slicked roof tiles in near total darkness. But as a singular ping on the airship's instruments it was more than sufficient to lift their spirits.

"This is Major Jun of the United forces airship Jongmu 12 requesting immediate assistance, I repeat immediate assistance." The airship's captain, a pudgy man with a receding hairline and thick mutton-chops pleaded into their radio set, about the only thing still working at this point. "We've lost an engine and we have a spirit on our six, we need immediate assistance." He yelled as a sizzling blast of emerald energy shot past them and blew the top off of a lesser mountain. For a moment it looked as if there was daylight in the world as the mountain top split apart in a dazzling blast of light that streamed in through the armoured shutters around the gondola windows.

"Roger, Jongmu, we're scrambling all available aircraft, disengage from our landing trajectory and rendezvous at co-ordinates Alpha six-eight-six."

"Negative, Control, we have lost our primary control surfaces and we are leaking fuel." Jun protested into the microphone.

"Can you find a place to put down, we'll send a rescue party." The controller said, his voice crackling over the radio.

Jun looked to his sensor officer, busily looking over her instrumentation for any sign of a landing zone in the jagged mountains. With an absolutely terrified look on her face she shook her head.

Jun took a deep breath and spoke into the microphone again. "Negative, Control. We can't find anything."

The radio was still going, as the slight crackling and the sound of commotion around the Controller repeated vaguely through the cramped cabin of the Jongmu.

"I'm sorry." The controller said hesitantly, his voice dripping with shame. To Jun it sounded like a death sentence. "We can't render assistance. I'm sorry." The Controller went quiet.

The gondola juddered into a grave silence after the radio cut out. No one was speaking and the other engine had finally spluttered out. Only the gentle noise of wind whipping past the windows and the sound of their own breathing remained. Jun took a shuddering breath and turned to face his crew five faces, grubby weather-beaten and fearful looked at him. "It has been an honour serving with you all."

Before the news could really settle in the bright green light of the spirit shone through the rear windows, its clusters of eyes had formed into a spiralling spiders web around one great glowing maw that crackled and spluttered with exotic energy. There was a bright light and then the airship was ripped apart.

A chorus of short sharp screams and the booming crackle of the spirit's beam searing through the airship sounded throughout the control room at the top of the temple before the radio went quiet. There was a mournful silence in the cramped little room for a moment. Only the constant clicking and whirring of the kitbashed equipment kept it from being a total silence.

"How many people were on the Jongmu?" General Iroh asked from his desk in the middle of the room.

"Six. According to the flight plan they filed." One of the lower officers reported.

"Commander Rhee, see to the paperwork, I have a meeting to attend." He said simply as he left for the door.

He walked down the twisting steps of the spiral staircase. There was a large void down the middle that airbenders used to glide down in a hurry and its walls were adorned with propaganda posters and landscape paintings of happier days now. Iroh tried and again failed to imagine the air temples as they were hundreds of years ago, filled with life and the stories of worldly nomads. Today it was a dreary place. Every possible opening had been covered over with shutters and tarps to keep any light from escaping and attracting marauding spirits. A rough network of lights and candles produced as much light as they could, but even so there were long shadows and dark spots everywhere. It reminded Iroh of winter mornings as a child, getting up before the sun and wandering around in the warm, dim light they had set up.

The wide, airy corridors were filled with refugees and off duty personnel, and the air was always dank with sweat or worse. They were stood around chatting or in the case of the small children that ran between the legs of their elders playing on their days off of school. Between them air acolytes went about keeping the temple clean. Whilst they understood the need to harbour whoever they could, as any good air-nomad should they also abhorred the mess that so many people inevitably caused.

Two guards were stood outside of what had, at one point been the meeting chamber for the elders of the temple, but which was now the Spiritual Sciences Research Group's main laboratory. In the middle of the room was a large table with a variety of maps, graphs and reports stacked high around the table. Taking up the back wall was a massive map of the world and the few remaining settlements highlighted with little pins. It was shockingly few. The Air Temples, The Foggy Swamp, Omashu, Zaofu, Ba Sing Se as well as The Fire Nation capitol which was just hanging on. There were a few scattered military bases and holdouts hidden away in far off places but most of the cities from before Harmonic Convergence were ruined or abandoned. The rest of the room consisted of scientific and technical equipment from chemistry sets to large clicking mechanical calculators. Chalkboards and graphs dotted the walls as well as a small shrine plastered over with photos of those long gone. Another wall was taken up by a wall of windows, perhaps the only uncovered windows in the temple, beside the galleries. Akir had given them the design to fit in their watchtowers and airships. It was one way glass, keeping their light in and without blocking a view of the outside.

"Ah general Iroh, good to see you." A White Lotus member named Akir said as he strode towards the slightly older general. He was medium height and rather skinny with sharp features and jet black, wavy hair. His most distinguishing feature was a shiny platinum eyepatch strapped over his left eye. Unlike the scientists and gurus that worked beneath him in white lab coats and colourful robes respectively he was dressed in traditional lotus garb, although he neglected to wear the cape and mantle for convenience's sake. At his side, as always was his sword. Though Iroh had never seen him draw the short thin sabre he had seen its gaudy hilt made of rosewood and stag-bear horn as well as a platinum tsuba decorated with a lotus pattern. He wore a long matching dagger next to it as well. His face was gaunt and birdlike with a pointed nose and high pockmarked cheeks as well as a proudly tended goatee to disguise a weak chin.

"Not so good we just lost the Jongmu." He answered sombrely. Everyone in the room dipped their head in silence for a moment.

"How many were on-board?" Akir asked politely. As he walked over to the laboratory's medicine cabinet and pulled out was clearly a bottle of sugar wine.

"Six, including the captain." Iroh answered.

"Did you know the captain?" Akir asked, pouring the wine into two ceramic cups. He handed one to Iroh from across the wide table, floating the earthenware across the wide table with his bending, without spilling a drop.

"Major Jun, not well but I never received a complaint against him and his scouting reports were always very thorough." Iroh said, looking down into the dull green liquid. "He always dodged the Officers parties, preferred staying with his kids I'm told."

"To Major Jun then. May he find greater fortune in the next life." Akir answered warmly as he swallowed the stiff, bittersweet drink.

"To Major Jun." Iroh returned before taking his own drink. He pulled a bit of a face as it went down. Iroh possessed many talents but holding his liquor wasn't really one of them. "Can you give me a run down on your projects, I need something to tell the War Council." He added briskly.

"Well, the experimental bending group is working on a way to alter the state of matter without changing the temperature, If we can perfect it and teach it to other benders we could pour rock like pudding and make basic constructs in minutes." He answered. "And we've come up with schematics for a smaller and more efficient lightningbending generator as well as metal bending dynamos."

"And what about your personal project?" Iroh asked, half hopeful and half defeated after asking so many times. "Are you any closer to finding the new Avatar?"

"No results yet." Akir answered frankly. "I think we should expand testing to Fire-Nation children as well. I hate to be morbid but there aren't a lot of us left, it's conceivable that an Avatar died before we could evacuate." Akir said calmly.

"How do we even know there is an Avatar anymore." Iroh asked. The other scientists stopped what they were doing and looked to Akir for a moment.

"According to Commander Mako Avatar Korra was able to reintegrate the Raava spirit before she made her last stand. If she didn't die in the Avatar State there should still be an Avatar out there."

"Well that'll be interesting to tell President Raiko." He answered with a hint of sarcasm.

"I suppose my expedition is out of the picture then?" Akir asked politely.

"I've looked over your proposal. If you can get the people and equipment yourselves I'll authorise it but I can't justify giving over that many assets for a mission this likely to fail." Iroh answered regretfully.

"Hey I don't intend on dying out there you know." Akir retorted, deflated.

"Nor did Major Jun, that's still the second airship we've lost this month."

"Can you get me funding at least, I can hire a ship and a few mercenaries if I have to." Akir pleaded.

"Fine, but the council will want results." Iroh huffed, before he walked out.

That night Akir was nearly asleep in his quarters, a repurposed attic above the laboratory. As the senior researcher he was treated to some fairly large quarters. A comfortable bed with silken sheets sat in the middle. He had a desk with a type-writer and a few mismatched chairs. There was a large bookshelf that took up the gap between the door and the corner. The walls were decorated with the rarest and most precious parts of his artefact collection or at least whatever he could get onto the airship when they left for here. He made sure there were no lights on to be seen before he pulled back the thick blackout curtains and looked to the outside. In the permanent twilight that covered the world the spirit lights shone in various colours across the sky. Beyond them were thousands of stars and the moon which gave its meagre light to the Earth still. He dreamt of running out of the temple and exploring as he used to, but it was a different world and not one in desperate need of explorers. Or so it thought. He returned to bed and slowly fell asleep as the sound of the nightshift continued all around him.

The next day he was up and about. Professor Seok was running the lab for the time being, giving him the chance to organise his expedition. He was heading down to the attic in the lower levels. It was those facts of life that accompanied living in an upside down monastery that he quite enjoyed. People stood around the attics every morning to see the airships come in. In the twilight of the brief few ours that counted as day many people made the special effort of going down just to soak up the sun and look at the beautiful valley they found themselves in. Akir found it incredibly humbling to look at the massive void of the air temple valley in all directions.

The roofs and forums, now repurposed into airship docks were hives of activity around midday. Most airship captains preferred to launch or land during the daylight hour to make it easier to come in for landing. Every day the airship crews would pile into their gondolas, seen off by their families. At other berths airships would come from far and wide carrying much needed supplies and equipment, or local patrols would return. Or sometimes they wouldn't return, every now and then a welcome home party turned into an impromptu funeral. The families of the Jongmu were holding their own funeral at the edge of the docks. Rather than traditional lanterns small kites inscribed with the name of their lost loved ones were released into the twisting winds of the valleys and swept off to greener pastures.

Akir dodged through the bustling crowd, he was looking for the best non-military blimp he could find. The wide squat, metal-clad flying tanks of the Earth Kingdom, the heavily armed fire nation gunships and the last remnants of the water tribe's air-fleet were present in the faded blue balloons of their small speedy long rage scouts. He knew better than to waste his time trying to get one of them to sign on with him. There were also tattered old airships, some massive skyliners ferrying tons of cargo and troops whilst others were dinky little skiffs that remained independent only because the United Forces didn't want to buy them off the owners. He searched for one that wasn't too old, too large or too damaged to handle the rigours of his expedition.

He found it in a most unusual airship. It was built around a fourty meter long, wide and slightly flattened rigid envelope made of some sort of shiny black material that glistened slightly in the weak light. It had a wide squat gondola slung beneath it made of, lightweight and sturdy aviation wood reinforced with strips and girders of platinum, all of it painted the dark blue/black of the night-time sky with a wide, glass bubble cockpit sitting at the prow of the airship covered over with metal shutters until only a few strips of smoky glass were visible from the outside. Unusually large double wings sprouting from the side of the gondola held absolutely enormous turboprop engines, a full ten metres long parallel to the airship's hull just far enough away that its propellers wouldn't shear into the airship's hull. On its underside it held three short stubby rudders and one large fin on the top. Stencilled on its side, just ahead of a decal of a biting dragon was the ship's name. _Hanapin_.

He walked up to it eagerly and knocked on the door. Almost immediately a gust of air blew the door open and nearly knocked him off the edge of the dock. He knew there was a safety net waiting below, he'd gone off before. Of course last time he fell off he landed wrong and broke his toes.

"You can't take this one damn you, I built it it's my bloody property." An earth kingdom airbender said as she leapt out on a buffeting cushion of air and landed as light as a feather. The crowd on the dock had formed a gawking, tittering mass. In the bold indigo and bright white of his vestments he always stood out, and a few always watched a member of the Order intently. Needless to say, watching one fall end over end like a twig in the wind was just the burst of comedy this place needed more of.

"I'm not trying to take your airship I want to hire you for an expedition." He answered. As he rolled onto his feet and stood up with a practiced, cat-like precision.

"Oh, well, sorry fella, officials like you usually take one look at my baby and decide they want her all to themselves." She answered cockily.

She carried herself with a poised confidence, typical of most of the airbenders Akirhad met. Like a lot of new airbenders, those empowered after Harmonic convergence she had chosen not to join with the nomads, as attested by her lack of an arrow. She was dressed in a dull red double breasted jumpsuit over a thin grey jumper. She had mousy brown hair with very short pigtails and a pair of goggles acting as a headband.

"I am Science Commander, Master Akir of the Order of the White Lotus, Chief Spiritual Sciences Researcher of the western air temple and the last Swordsman of the Si Wong Desert." He said with an air of pompous posterity as he straightened his vestments, trying to restore his bruised ego in front of the ad hoc audience. "Who are you?"

"Captain Nehal, what's this about money." She answered much more bluntly.

"I won't lie to you, it'll be a long journey and the odds of survival are so low the only reason I'm hiring you I because the military don't want to lose their assets." Akir answered truthfully, perhaps a bit nervously.

"But the pay's good right." Nehal asked, apparently unfazed.

Akir reached into a pocket on his sash and pulled out an official looking piece of paper and handed it to her.

"That is a government officiated contract for a hundred thousand yuans upon our return." He then took out a fold of bold red yuans from his opposite pocket. "And here's ten thousand as a down payment." He added.

"The government's prepared to pay out all of this." She answered incredulously.

"Like I said, the government doesn't expect us to survive the journey, as far as they're concerned they don't think you'll be alive to cash in. I'm rather hoping we will, mind you." He said, absent minded stroking the pointed beard around his chin.

"And what is it we'll be doing that's so likely to get us killed then?" She asked as she sat down on the rim of the _Hanapin's_ open bulkhead.

"We'll be going into the Spirit Wilds." He answered with an air of drama.

"Most airships have gone through there." She answered unimpressed. "Scavenger teams, scouting missions, just taking a shortcut, there isn't an airship captain alive who hasn't braved it."

"I imagine there are quite a few captains who aren't alive precisely because they braved it." He answered sharply. "And we aren't just skirting the borders, as high up as your ship will go. We're going to make landfall in some of the most heavily infested areas in the world." He added almost menacingly, with a building apprehension in his voice. "The Bhanti temple, Ba Sing Se University, the Republic City University and the Library of Wan Shi Tong." He listed, deepening direly on the last name.

Nehal gulped heavily. She weighed the stack of yuans in her hand. "Well we all say we'll get rich or die trying, when do we ship out."

"I'll need a few mercenaries for security and I'd like to load some gear onto your bird." He said patting the _Hanapin's_ hull.

"Don't call it that." Nehal answered deadpan. "I'm not letting anyone on this ship without meeting them first." She said before she walked off towards the bowels of the temple.

"Where are you going?" Akir yelled, weaving through the crowd after her.

"We're finding your mercenaries, aren't we?" She asked with a self-amused grin.

"And where are we going to find them here?" Akir asked as he tried to keep pace with her.

"There's a bar in the middle of the city, a lot of scavangers and mercenaries hang out there." She answered. "And why are we going into spirit central anyway?"

"That's confidential, I'll tell you when we're in a secure location." He shouted uncertainly to be heard over the chatter of groups around him. A few looked up to a Lotus shouting about confidential things. "And why haven't I heard anything about this merc hotspot?"

"Because not everything in here complies with martial law and you're part of the government." She answered simply.

They reached the rear of the temple, near the massive stone and metal anchors that held the temple onto the mountain. Built in an old storage chamber under one such anchor was this bar.

A thick metal door presented itself, it was sturdy and well made, even after centuries of use it seemed no less hardy and no less able to keep people out. Until Akir flicked open the lock with a precise application of metal bending. He pushed the heavy slab of a door out of the way and walked into a rather charming bar, in a scummy, decrepit kind of way.

Immediately a rather stout man with a long moustache and scrunched up piggish face moved to bar their entrance.

"What are you doing here, flower man." He said mockingly, there was a small chuckle from the crowd behind him.

"What business is it of yours?" Akir returned, less amused. He edged right into the thuggish guard's personal space with a grim snarl on his face. Just to aggravate the much larger man he flicked his chest.

Naturally the bouncer pressed back breathing fire from his nostrils, forcing the small and slight Akir to back pedal away. "It's my business because you aint getting in without my say so." The bouncer bellowed. Akir gave him a smug look and then weaved past him through the open door, Nehal squeaked through a second later. She blew the door shut with a sharp breeze and Akir set the locks, leaving the bouncer outside.

"Are you feeling clever about that?" Nehal asked mischievously.

"Just a tad." He grinned back.

The interior of the club was a dark, dingy, poorly ventilated room. Low, wide tables made from old cable spools filled the floor whilst old aribender storage vases served as chairs. There was a bar made from earthbent stone at the back of room with a fairly impressive stock of drink locked up behind a messily fitted locker with wire grid doors. Hanging from the roof, between old vents was a series of electric lights, evidently the work of a few bribed workmen. A rather distressingly large number of United Forces red coats stuck out in the crowd of people. As well as a white lab coat.

"Doctor Kumul?" Akir gasped in surprise as he saw one of his understudies sat between a water tribe warrior and a smuggler of indeterminate nationality. Before the put upon doctor could answer the bartender pulled a rather large crossbow from under the counter. Akir went to loosen a bolt on the weapon and found that it was made entirely out of wood and shaped bone. The Arrow was made of sharpened bone. It appeared someone was very much prepared to fight a metal bender.

"What are you here for, Lotus, you've got no right to barge into my establishment, I'm a taxpaying, law abiding proprietor." He yelled.

Akir stammered something for a moment before Nehal nudged him in the back. "Say something explorer boy." She whispered.

"First off, you're threatening me with a crossbow, so no, you're not law abiding." Akir answered wryly. "Second I'm actually here to hire mercenaries for an expedition." He added shifting under the gaze of so many harsh looking faces. At the mention of a job quite a few gave him their undivided attention, watching him with hungry eyes.

"What's the pay!?" A fire nation privateer asked.

"I have a pay slip from the United Forces, five hundred thousand Yuans for everyone who signs on, plus ten thousand up front." He proclaimed. There was a mighty clamouring, enough to drown out the bartender's protests until he just gave up and put away his crossbow.

"What are we doing for this payday?" Asked a water tribe mercenary with a massive withering burn up one half of his face.

"I'm not going to lie to you we'll be going to Republic City and the Spirit Library amongst other places. The conditions will be horrible, you'll have to do a lot of travel and we might all die before we can cash in. But if we do succeed not only will we be rich but we might just turn back ten thousand years of darkness and return the world to balance." Quite a few just huffed and dismissed him as a madman looking to get himself killed.

"What do we do now?" Akir whispered back to Nehal.

"We'll sit down, anyone who wants to join on will come to us." She answered.

They picked a table about as far from the bartender as they could find. For about a quarter hour they sat alone, avoiding odd looks from the neighbouring tables.

The first to approach was a rather strange man. His head was shaved hairless aside from a long topknot. He wore smoky black goggles over his eyes and he had red tattoos on his cheek. His ears were heavily pierced with onyx black studs in his earlobes and silvery piercings through the cartilage. He was dressed in a grey double breasted jacket with no sleeves and a light red gorget which matched his gauntlets and his dull crimson shendyt which hung over spice brown trousers. The exceedingly tidy man approached them with an icy, almost illustrious calm. He didn't barge through the crowds of people nor did he weave through them like Akir. Instead he simply found a way to be where they weren't.

"My name is Zhu-Rong." He said, simply taking a seat without hesitation.

"Um…Hello, Zhu-Rong, tell us about yourself." Nehal asked, slightly offput. The chiselled features of Zhu-Rong's face betrayed no emotion or sensation, it was really only the fact that his lips moved when he spoke that suggested he could even move his face. His voice was deep and guttural, groaning slightly as he spoke with an almost commanding tone.

"I am a master of Dancing Dragon firebending, I can lightningbend and I possess years of mercenary experience." He responded with exactly measured tones.

"I say, you're a Sun-Warrior aren't you?" Akir asked excitedly. "Avatar Aang told us you were still alive but we haven't heard anything about you since harmonic convergence."

"The Eternal Flame still burns and the Dark Spirits do not dare attack our city while it does." He responded as soon as Akir finished.

"So why are you out here, if your people are safe?" Nehal asked sceptically, looking back at her reflection in his goggles.

"Because the Eternal Flame is weakening. Slowly, but it is weakening. It might hold out for another ten generations but in ten thousand years of darkness that would still mean the end of my people." Zhu-Rong answered. "I have been trying to gather support for a mission like yours, if you believe you can end it then I must try to make that happen."

"I'm convinced, you're hired." Akir answered. "Here's your down payment." Akir said as he pulled out a stack of Yuans.

"No." Zhu-Rong put his hand up. "I don't need your money. I do this for my people."

"You are just the best!" Akir exclaimed. Nehal looked on, suspicious.

The next to come to them was a rather tall and muscular woman from a few tables over. She pulled away from a teenage girl in dull, neutral coloured clothes. This woman herself was dressed in a short, sleeveless Cheongsam of thick emerald silk with a pair of hard wearing cargo trousers tucked into leather gaiters and hard wearing hobnail boots. She had a pair of fans tucked into her sash as well as a sword in a rosewood saya. A great many pockets and pouches hung from a belt tucked into her sash. The most distinctive feature she bore was an ornate golden headdress attatched to her long brown hair tied and pinned into a slightly ornate bun.

She bowed before them. "My name is Mari. May I have a seat?" She asked politely.

"You're hired." Akir responded, apparently a non sequitur. Mari just looked at him dumbfounded.

Nehal looked at him for a moment full of doubt. "Akir, seriously ask at least one question or something."

"Are you a Kyoshi Warrior?" Akir asked with a slightly wry smile.

"I am."

"That's all I need to hear."

"Actually I need to negotiate pay." She said as she took her seat.

"Knew it." Nehal said before she took a sip of her hip flask.

Mari waved the smaller girl over. She was dressed in neutral hues of brown and grey as well as faded green. Her clothes were inelegant workman's wear, a size too big for her and made of hard wearing, not particularly comfortable fabrics like canvas and boiled leather but they were sturdy, warm and clean. More than many these days. She was like the elder Mari, whilst she too was tall she was lanky and awkward, swaddled in oversized clothing and trying not to stare at Akir' shining eyepatch. She was a brunette with tan skin, much like Mari though her eyes were a bright blue as opposed to Mari's green and she had a shorter squarer nose and long hair covered by cloth to make it easier to look after. "Hello, Sir." She squeaked awkwardly, looking down at the dusty floor.

"This is my niece, Comet. Her parents didn't make it onto an evacuation ship. I need to know that I can be paid posthumously." She asked earnestly before her voice took on a more serious and steely tone. "I overheard you talking with your firebender guy, if he doesn't need to get paid we're having his share."

"If you have a child to protect why would you take a job like this?" Akir asked. Mari's distorted reflection looked back at her in his eye-patch.

Mari and Comet exchanged a look for a moment. "I'm a Kyoshi Warrior, I swore to live honourably. There aren't a lot of merc jobs like that."

"How do we even know you're a Kyoshi Warrior. I've met a lot of con-men with 'orphans' to feed." Nehal asked as she put her feet up in front of Mari.

Akir looked her in the eyes, she looked back unwavering. He moved to draw the dagger at his side. Not a centimetre of the bone white blade was drawn before Mari had leapt from her seat, positioned herself between Akir and Comet and unfurled a metal fan a hair away from Akir's neck. The blade of the fan was so sharp it cut off the longest hair in Akir's finely trimmed goatee.

Zhu-Rong just watched them with arm's crossed and a blank expression on his face.

"I am quite certain she's a Kyoshi warrior now, can we hire her?" Akir whispered barely moving his jaw lest he accidently slit his throat.

Mari flicked her fan closed and sat back down looking highly unamused. Nehal took a good long look at her trying to discern any last sign that she wasn't entirely honest. She could not find any.

"She can come aboard. Let's get out of here." Nehal said, squirming a tad on her hard wooden chair.

Akir put down two stacks of yuans. He pulled out a pen and two slips of paper, pay warrants. He ticked the relevant boxes and signed them "That's cashable when we return or three weeks from today, whatever comes first."

He stood up and made for the door. "We'll leave in two hours, look for the _Hannapin _at dock 12, black balloon wooden hull." Akir added before he stood up and left.

The thug was waiting outside, red faced and fuming. "Listen here you one-eyed pompous-" He was cut short by a fine spray of grit and dust to the face, directed at him by a straight armed swing of Akir's bending.

Zhu-Rong didn't even bother to speak before standing up and walking out the door. Nehal took one last look at the pair from Kyoshi before she left for her ship to make ready for departure, muttering about lifting gas and ailerons under her breath.

Mari pressed the stacks of Yuans into Comet's hands but the younger woman squirmed and tried to press it back into Mari's hands.

"Please Mari, that man's going to get you killed. He said it himself." Comet protested as she tried to push the money back. "Just back out, we can find other work, I can find other work." She said, her voice quivering.

"What job will you get? The only ones open around here are Airship crews and factory workers." Mari asked rhetorically. "You're going to take that cash and pay for a nice room somewhere. When the payslips comes through you just need to move to the Eastern Temple with the other rich people." Mari hissed her words with an air of intimidating importance. "Get a job as a researcher or something, marry someone rich and powerful and live happily. Ever. After."

"You can't be serious, you're going to die just so I can go to the Eastern Temple." Comet replied. It was rare that the awkward teen managed to stand up to her imposing warrior woman of an aunt. "We can just take the down payment and hide, they'll never be able to find us in the commons."

Mari's face softened for a minute. "A Kyoshi warrior does not renege on a deal, you know that Comet."

Comet looked down and away for a moment. "I-I just don't want to lose you."

"Well I don't really intend to die, if I have to walk to the Eastern Air Temple to catch you up I will." Mari said tenderly. "I just need you to know that this is a dangerous mission but that's nothing we haven't faced before." She cupped Comet's face in her hard, calloused hands and pulled her in for a kiss on the forehead.

Comet saw it for the lie it was, it didn't matter how strong or how tough you were in the spirit wilds, not really. "Mari, please." Comet pleaded one last time.

Mari pulled the long hairpins out of her bun, letting her hair fall down to her shoulders.

"Here, just in case." She said, putting them in Comet's hand. "Love you, Comet."


	2. Chapter 2: Shot in the Dark

Though it was only two hours ago that Akir was last on the docks it had a different air to it. The already weak sun had set and the faint form of spirit lights began to dance in the night. He looked up at the Hannapin, its silky black balloon caught the few dim red lights that the docks afforded to illuminate the landing pads. Looking back into the ink black sky it signalled possibility as if he were looking upon the shores of a great ocean. Or peering down the edge of a cliff into an abyss. There were many ways to die in the world and they would only pile up the further he went from his chambers and his laboratory.

He was wearing a trenchcoat of distressed, weather-beaten brown leather and laden down with large and heavy rucksacks one across each shoulder which threatening to pull him to the ground. He arduously walked to the front of the ship, to the large cargo ramp. The porters Nehal had hired, rather than try to push crates of preserves and bulk tanks of fuel onto the back of the ship used eartbending powered sledges to shift them without breaking a sweat. Some were stamped with the symbol of the white lotus, which the porters treated with an air of reverence for the mysterious order. Others were stamped with the seal of the United Republic. They just shoved them on to the ship without a care, they handled republic crates all the time.

Nehal wafted off the back of the ship, nearly smacking her skull on the balloon of the mighty airship. "We're almost loaded, where are your mercenaries." She said, landing daintily on the hard stone.

"I don't know." Akir admitted defeated. "I'm sure they'll be along shortly." He responded hopefully. Beneath his whiskered smile he was deeply worried. His tan cheeks nearly burnt with humiliation at the prospect of being taken for a considerable amount of the government's money.

With about ten minutes to spare Mari appeared more striking than most any woman either of them had ever encountered. She wore a set of black metal armour and her face was painted a chalky white with blood red accents over her eyes. A fur trimmed half cloak hung from her back to keep her warm in the cold nights that now dominated the world. She carried in each hand a large metal suitcase almost as long as the giant woman was tall.

"Sorry about the wait, it turns out security will give you quite a hassle if you walk around in full wargear." She walked briskly up the ramp, straight through the middle of Akir and Nehal and planted the suitcases in the cargo hold. "So where's the firebender?" She asked from the top of the ramp.

Nine minutes came and went. Zhu-Rong appeared at the edge of the docks and crossed the platform. By the time he reached the _Hanapin_'s berth he was exactly on time according to Akir's fob watch. He was carrying a small satchel and nothing else new.

"I am ready to depart." He said, standing before them. They waited for a moment. He did not move.

"Come on then." Nehal tried, as she headed up through the cargo compartment. The inside of the _Hannapin_ was impressive. The wood of the hull was spotless and the deckplates were clean and tidy, even in the cargo hold. The pipes and wires and valves were neat and orderly snaking over the walls in bright colours and almost artful lines and kinks and bends across the walls. There were strong glow stone crystals from Ba Sing Se hanging from the cargo bay roof, bathing it in a cold green light through slatted shutters.

"Zhu-Rong, Mari, this is where you'll be staying, so long as you don't touch my stuff you can do what you like with it." Nehal declared simply. Zhu-Rong tossed his satchel to the ground.

Nehal pulled the bulkhead open and moved through to the next compartment. It was a crossroads, though thankfully not one lit by those awful crystal lights. In the middle sat a ladder up into the envelope, where the fuel tanks were stored nestled in between the inner gas balloons. It also contained the bending generator and large batteries to power the ship's electrical grid.

"To the bow is the acess to the cockpit, no one goes in there without my permission, on the left are my quarters and the guest room, you'll sleep there Akir." Nehal explained. "To the right is the bathroom, workshop and kitchen, don't worry those are separate rooms." She added with a slight grin.

Nehal went forwards. Past the narrow corridor, just wide enough for one person. They entered the cockpit. It was a wide, round room with one seat surrounded by banks of instrumentation. It looked to be exceptionally comfortable, made of a high quality rouged leather. The windows of the airship were covered over by thick metal slats. There was little to see most of the day and they helped to keep light from attracting spirits. In front of the chair there was a wide array of levers, valves and even pedals. Gages, dials and a radar screen dotted the control panel. In the centre, however was a large captain's wheel with a rubberised grip and a pair of powerful-looking engine throttles.

The leather crunched as she sat in the great chair. She flicked on the radio.

"This is _Hanapin _to Control we are departing, I repeat, we are departing." She said into the speaker on the desk of her control panel.

"Roger control, you are clear to proceed." The controller said back. "Good luck out there." The controller added, they always added it for whatever that meant in the end.

Nehal turned the key. The whole craft shook as the engines fired up, their powerful thrumming could still be faintly heard inside the well-insulated hull. The craft released its moorings and reversed out of the trappings of the docks. The rear engine tilted its thrust down and the ship rose and rose until it was well out of the windy valley. Through the thin slats the passengers looked out to see the sun setting on the great mountain range of the Western Mountains. The Mo Ce sea was nearby, glassy blue and strangely placid.

"Hold on, this is going to be seriously fast." Nehal said with a pleased grin. She put the engines into forward motion and then pushed the thrusters straight to full. The craft shot forward with a thundering racket. According to the speedometer they were doing a hundred and seventy kilometres per hour, almost unheard of.

"There's no way we can fly all the way to republic city like this." Mari commented.

"No, but I can have a lot of fun from here to the shores of the Earth Kingdom." Nehal answered as they streaked across the sky. The _Hanapin_ climbed and climbed until it was well above the clouds and far beyond turbulence.

Comet stood there dumbstruck as Mari walked out the door. She was there for a good ten minutes before pragmatism got the better of her. She stuffed her coat with the stacks of yuans and quickly made for the exit. She knew that there was many a mercenary who would like nothing more than to catch her in a quiet corner of the temple and rip the money from her.

Scurrying down narrow corridors she reached the centre of the spire. Despite being in the near centre it was no less drafty than any other part of the temple. The air-nomads could warm themselves with their breath and of course they quite enjoyed a good breeze. Not so the more mundane inhabitants of the temple. In times long past this massive opera-like hall was meant to allow the entire populace of that particular spire to be addressed at any one time from a platform at the bottom of the pit. Now the poorest and most desperate refuges gathered in the Commons as it had been called. At each entrance there were United Forces guards armed with batons. Even then it was hardly a safe or comfortable place. In concentric rings there were large viewing platforms all around the ten sides of the chamber.

The dregs lived there, people with no steady jobs just laid around on platforms about forty people wide, their territories were no larger than the area they could defend against someone looking for more space. They kept all their possessions on their person at all times, indeed it wasn't uncommon for people to replace the buttons on their pockets with locks. The worst off were the Touched. When the spirits swept over the many were tormented and possessed by the spirits warping their bodies beyond recognition, and sometimes their mind. They covered their deformities in rags and huddled together in the shadows, afforded more space than anyone else simply because no one wanted to go near them. As 'wealthier' members of the commons, Comet and Mari lived out of an antchamber by the stairs so small that Mari could touch her fans to either side of it. It was basically just a storage closet that they were allowed to rent out.

In the small airless room she picked up a satchel and stuffed it full of the few things she owned, Mari had beaten her here and packed her things in a noticeable hurry considering the mess on her side. She filled her satchel with the few things she owned. A small toy elephant koi, an old book, Professor Zei's _A Brief History of Pre-Nomadic Airbenders_, third edition, her spare outfit, some hair care products and a large ledger. She picked up her bedroll off the dusty ground and carried it under her arm. The first person she saw by her door was a rail thin boy with sharp high cheeks. He was younger than her, covered in filth and much shorter. She threw her bedroll to the ground next to him and walked away.

She headed straight up for the basement galleries at the top of the temple, so named because they were allowed windows, made of a rather expensive one way glass and half hidden by the overhang of rock. It was a long walk and as she climbed the dozens of flights of stairs the squalor decreased until she was finally at the top of the tower, looking at the colourful ad hoc fleet of the private sector, the greatest of them was the massive white skyliner owned by Future Industries. Huddled like viper-bats under the overhang of rock that was the temple's foundation the private airships of the richest people still living were docked there. Most hadn't moved since their owners had fled here, many of them from Republic City. It was said that in the Eastern Air Temple where the government and the truly wealthy were quartered whole fleets of airships were nested, hidden in the banks of fog that swathed the temple's foundation. Compared to those illustrious guests even the upper levels of the Western temple were but a shadow of its beauty. None the less, clean white flagstone and golden yellow marble walls decorated with sweeping murals of rolling clouds, green fields and sunny oceans were more than beautiful enough for the time being. All along the galleries there were low wooden benches and potted plants, mostly arctic breeds such as polar roses that could withstand the low light.

There were more guards on this level than most and they gave her rather unpleasant looks. The citizens of this level, dressed in sharp suits and fine robes sneered at her, even their attending servants appeared somewhat annoyed by her presence. Even in the safety of these streets she felt like a target with the weight of her yuans pressing down in her pockets. The only ones who did not mind her were the Air Nomads; they wafted by her without judgement.

The galleries were equivalent to a boardwalk, dotted with the last boutiques and hotels left in existence for thousands of miles. First she walked into the nearest clothing store, she knew full well that she wouldn't be taken seriously up here if she kept looking like a factory hand. Almost immediately a large and rather imposing water tribe man in a black tang suit walked up to her.

"Can I help you with anything." He asked with a sense of false hospitality. It was about all he could do not to pinch his nose shut.

"I've come into some money and I'm looking for some new clothes." Comet answered earnestly, she was somewhat cowed by the broad, chiselled looking man as he loomed over him.

"Oh, well let me help you." he said, his voice turning to a more pleasant tone as he heard a mention of payment. Cubbies of rosewood held well-made clothing crafted with silks and leathers as well as high quality twill, tweed, mohair, satin and velvet and many others Comet couldn't identify. Polar flowers sat in painted porcelain vases. Small blue lanterns hung from the ceiling and the floor was covered with embroidered carpets.

"What would your price range be, our cheapest clothes begin at a hundred yuans and go up to around one thousand, excluding jewlery of course." He answered politely.

"I'm looking for something practical and hardwearing." Comet responded, still dizzied by the shop's opulence.

The clerk thought for a moment before he disappeared behind a curtain into a storage room. He emerged a moment later with an exquisite red and brown jacket decorated with cloudlike swirls across the leather reinforced shoulders. It had solid brass buttons and silk in between. In his other hand he pinched a pair of gutuls, brown leather boots embroidered with blue piping and cream swirls like crashing waves.

"This goes for two hundred and ninety yuans." He answered.

"It's wonderful, why is it so um….cheap, I think." She asked, mystified.

"It's a shooting jacket. There's nothing to shoot anymore so no one wants to buy it." He answered. "Same story with the shoes I'm afraid, riding boots for a place with no mounts."

"Well, I think it looks fine, thanks." She said as she put down the required amount."

Dressed like a wealthy young lady Comet made her way to the first hotel she could find. A few people stared at her and then she realised she was basically dressed like a hunter in a place with nothing to hunt. No one else was dressed anything like her and they all picked up on the incredibly odd young girl, standing gawkily in the well-appointed foyer. Her face burnt red with shame and she got to the back of the line for the check in desk, stood behind an incredibly well dressed woman with long black hair.

"Good hunt, out there." A pale skinned, yellow eyed man in an obnoxiously loud red and purple sequined suit said, tittering to himself all the while. He was a strangely colourful man. Hair dye had become something of a fad to those wealthy enough to afford it and his gelled pompadour was dyed 'lightning blue' as was his full, thick beard which hugged his oversized chin. He wore gold and gems on all of his fingers and his wrists were decorated with engraved golden bangles.

"Actually I'm an airship captain." She lied. "These were all gifts, or trophies if you will." She said with a false air of confidence and a half remembered affectation of refinement. "The boots were a gift from a water-tribesman and my coat came from a fire nation noble I rescued during the Fall of Ember Island." She lied. "Where did you get your outfit from, a Tripple Threat Triad."

The man's face scrunched up into an infuriated sneer. "Really, a little girl like you is supposed to captain an airship?"

"I'm eighteen." The sixteen year old Comet lied. "Avatar Aang saved the world at twelve. I can captain ship." She answered, proud of a fictional vessel and a motley crew of fictional entities.

"And Avatar Korra went into battle around age eighteen as I remember. Look where that got us." He answered with a mirthless smirk.

"I took over future industries when I was that old." The woman ahead of Comet replied, the low volume of her smoky voice belied her formidable and barely restrained anger. "And at least Korra tried something." As she grew more incensed her voice rose to an irate growl.

"Miss Sato I-I had no idea I-" The red suited man stammered nervously, his face blushing till it nearly matched the colour of his clothes.

"You've never had an idea in your life, Singh." The few onlookers that had moments ago been somewhat amused by Comet's tragic taste in clothing now looked on quite shocked as the illustrious Mister Singh of Singh Utilities took a severe dressing down from one of his few equals in commercial power and influence. "Your parents made Singh Utilities great, your brother modernised it and you just sold a third of it to buy a mansion that's probably ash by now." Asami finished.

Singh looked about for a friendly face, someone who would speak out for him. Unfortunately what Singh lacked in wit he made up for in determination. His endless filibustering and longwinded presentations during this year's Contractors Conference had done very little to provide him with friends. He huffed once, exhaling a waft of fire and then left the room.

"You really aren't an Airship Captain, though." Asami commented, somewhat calmer now.

"Yes I am." Comet shot back defensively.

"Airship captains always stay with their ships." Asami countered, her voice returning to its usual relaxed metre. "So who are you, really?"

"My aunt's a mercenary, she was paid to go on an expedition with this guy from the White Lotus." Comet answered. "I-I guess I'm just enjoying myself."

"Let me guess, little guy, metal eyepatch, carries a sword, a bit insane." Asami answered pinching the bridge of her nose.

"You know him?"

"Unfortunately….. Akir takes just about every chance he can get to ask me to fund one of his suicidal expeditions." Comet's eyes widened at the word 'suicidal' and Asami picked up on it. "But his proposal at this month's meeting was very sound." She added hastily.

The room Comet had rented was at once spectacular and disappointing. From what little she remembered of her family's house on Kyoshi Island the living room alone was far larger than this, though not so well appointed. It was more space than she had seen since she was a toddler. A bed of wrought iron and duck feathers sat at the far end of the room. The furnishings were mahogany and marble with a silk rug decorating the hard wood floor and a massive, spotless mirror that covered a whole wall. At the same time, for two thousand yuans a week it seemed a tad disappointing.

Then she saw a brochure on the table. Flipping it open Comet realised it was a room service menu.

A half hour later and a sea-food buffet, a pot of dim-sum and a rather large plate of melonpan was being carted in. The rather courteous serving woman placed them on a tray and left after a quick bow.

"Thank you." Comet said politely as she moved to the dining table in the corner of the room with a poised posture. As soon as the door clicked shut she pounced on the feast, gorging herself on fine dining she hadn't so much as smelt in over a decade.

That night Comet had quickly drifted off to a deep sleep, on a soft bed with a full stomach. That all changed when someone was attacked. The groan of rock against rock was a prelude to the wall of mirrors shattering into thousands of shards of razor sharp glass. The thunderous crashing sound of the glass shattering woke Comet with a start.

There was a gaping hole in her room, which opened up to the next. The high voltage crackle of surging electricity followed by a pained yelp lit up the breach in cold blue for a moment.

Comet leapt off the bed terrified. She bruised her chest on the hard floor and a stray shard of glass slashed her arm. Whimpering she fumbled in the dark as she felt around for her complimentary slippers.

A man in a dull blue suit beneath a thick blue travelling robe came clattering through the wall. As he stood up shimmering shards of glass stuck out of him like boar-q-pine quills. He bent a chunk of stone out of the foundation, shattering the wooden floor to splinters as it ripped out of the ground and flung it at his enemy. He noticed Comet by her terrified gasp.

Flinging another piece of marble Comet dodged the flying rock. She found an electric lamp by the dresser. Flicking it on she got a better look at the man in the blue suit. He was one of the Touched, the tan and handsome half of his face gave away to a bioluminescent face like a deep sea fish, with mottled brown skin and a massive, lipless and cheekless maw of a mouth. He shrieked and sealed shut his bulbous fish like eye.

Seizing the moment Asami leapt through the breach and struck him with her shock glove. He let out an unearthly rasp before he fell to the ground.

The third attacker, a woman with feathers for hair and her right eye replaced by a cluster of orange eagle eyes, came screeching out after her. She was dressed in hard wearing leathers that were scratched and holed, seemingly by her own yellow, leathery hands. In the dim light of the table lamp five deep scars on both her cheeks stretched down her face.

"Surrender, the touch can free you." The woman screeched as long black talons slashed through the air, a hair's breadth from Asami's face. She dodged backwards. The bird woman swept shrieking and slashing. As her lips pulled back in rage the yellowish beak that replaced her teeth became more prominent. She lunged again, this time Asami evaded to the bird woman's left and caught her in the flank with a left jab. Winded the bird staggered back and Asami finished her off with a blast from her shock glove.

A thrown table slammed into her left side and sent her reeling to the floor. Stepping through the hole between rooms was the single most massive and monstrous thing Comet had ever seen.

"Did you really think a little shock could put me down." He declared arrogantly with a scorched handprint burnt onto his chest.

He was barely dressed, wearing only leather braces and a pair of torn breeches. All that Comet could see of his body was covered in vibrantly coloured coral like growths. His lips were pulled back revealing blue gums with pointed teeth. His head, besides his shockingly human eyes, was covered in a skull like carapace of bone with twisting coral horns. His colossal right arm terminated in a growth shaped and sharpened into a broad sword so long it scraped the ground as he walked. He looked at her, straight at her. His freakish patchwork of a face changed slightly though she couldn't decipher what it meant.

Comet felt for her hair pins and grasped them quickly. He stepped to her with surprising speed for a man who looked like a walking coral reef. She threw herself out the way in time to evade an overhead slash that cleaved the table in half. His 'sword' became lodged in the floor. Comet rolled in under his out stretched arm and stuck the stiletto blade concealed in her hair pin deep into his flank. With a pained roar he wrenched it free and swept around in a haze of pain and fury that nearly took her head off.

Comet looked around the room. She had locked the door and this walking ecosystem of a man was still between her and the hole in the room. She noticed a light switch by the door. Circling around him comet backed to the edge of the room. She tried futilely to wrench the door open. When his heavy feet touched the ground she gasped in hear and pressed herself up against the wall besides the door.

"I love it when they try to run." He growled. With a fierce grunt of exertion he gained momentum and went for a powerful stab. Instead of plunging right through the girl's midsection he stuck his sword arm through layers of rock until he reached the power line for the lightswitch. He shuddered and shook as smoke wafted out of the gash in the wall. Eventually he fell tremoring to the floor.

Singh blew the door down with a burst of firebending and leapt in with a trio of guards at his back.

"Girl, what happened here." Singh asked as he spied the three unconscious attackers on the floor as well as Asami.

"We were attacked by these guys." Comet answered, her hands were trembling and she stumbled over her words.

"Get some clothes on, we need to take you down to the barracks for questioning." The first guard said as he bent his water back into its waterskin.


	3. Chapter 3: Landfall

Nehal locked the controls to a predetermined course and speed and headed back into the cargo hold. Akir, Zhu-Rong and Mari were already waiting, sat about on a few crates.

"All right we're well out of radio range and there are no other airships for a thousand clicks of us, now will you tell us why we're here." Nehal demanded simply.

Akir gulped deeply with dread. "I'm sure you've all guessed it by now, there's not much we can do to keep it secret. The war, as it is presenting itself is unwinnable. The average intensity and length of light during the daylight hour is decreasing and global temperatures are dropping. Within two to three years the majority of the globe will be uninhabitable." He felt palpably ill as the words slipped out of him. Ever since he had been informed it had plagued his sleep and his waking life in equal measure.

Nehal huffed angrily. Zhu-Rong held his chin in thought. Mari, however was absolutely shocked, she could only look at him mouth agape.

"That's why I'm hoping we can find something to either defeat the spirits or ensure the survival of the human race." Akir added. "I'm not going to lie to you; I would have preferred a fleet, an army and a full research staff. But we're it, and for the sake of the world we have to be enough." There was a long heavy pause before someone broke the silence.

"Well, how did we survive it the first time?" Mari asked.

"According to second hand reports from Avatar Korra our ancestors survived on the backs of giant lion-turtles." Akir responded.

"Lion turtles are extinct, aren't they?" Mari asked again, dread welling up in her stomach as she thought back to Comet.

"Avatar Aang claims he discovered the last one during the hundred years war. Since then we haven't found a single one." Akir replied.

"Back then they called him the Last Airbender." Nehal answered, flicking a lock of hair out of her face with a gust of wind.

Akir took her meaning and answered "When I was younger I searched the world for proof of living lion turtles, the closest I ever came was a twenty year old carcass on the shore of Whale Tail island, and this." He drew his dagger and laid it on the crate that kind of served as a table. It was a long, needle thin dagger made of what appeared to be bone and scrimshawed with engravings of a winged sandshark flanked by a pair of gilacorns on one side and a rhinoceros beetle with its wings unfurled on the other side. "If there are any Lion Turtles left in the world then they're not going to help us."

"So what are we out here looking for exactly?" Zhu Rong asked, in his slow patient timbre.

"Despite Vaatu's efforts multiple spirits have not been corrupted by his influence, Hei-Bai, Koh, The Lady of the Lake, Yue, and Wan Shi Tong, to name the most prominent." Akir explained. "There has to be a reason why, I believe that if we can find out how we might be able to reverse the corruption of the dark spirits."

"Wouldn't that still leave a bunch of spirits wandering around the mortal plane though?" Nehal asked.

"Yes but they wouldn't be an organised malicious force, spirits aren't innately evil or good, they'd just be another sort of people essentially." Akir answered.

The North Pole had always been a cold and inhospitable place, since the first waterbenders settled there to the last day that esteemed tribe had called these frigid shores home. Since the spirit portals opened it had become a veritable hellscape. Dark spirits, maddened and hateful poured out of it and prowled the wastes attacking anything in sight. All around the tundra shadowy, shapeless entities spilled through the haze of the permanent blizzard that engulfed the land, like ink pluming in a glass of water. White spirit vines tangled through the ice, burying the entire icecaps in a white, frosted over forest.

In the shattered capital of the North a jagged conflagration of ice and stone jutted out of the ruined city. Every inch of its chill surface was carved with characters preaching faith, strength, and enlightenment alongside engravings of swirling spirits and North Pole wildlife.

A small, thin woman Touched by a wolf-like spirit made her way through the central hall of the building. It was a harsh and austere cavern. All of its furnishings were harsh and angular made of stone, bone and hard, grey, ugly arctic wood. Braziers of crudely bent metal burning tinder from the few winter trees that grew in the north as well as seal blubber to help it last longer, which stifled the frigid air with cloying, oily smoke that pooled at the ceiling of the great hall and slowly wafted out of the gaps were the packed ice and gravel did not meet together to allow the spirit vines entry. Massive living roots dangled down with other smaller lanterns tied around their ends.

At the furthest end of the hall, there was an ornate throne of chiselled slate and reinforced with metal carved all the way up to the roof. Thick spirit vines coiled around it and up out of the ceiling with small lanterns and spirits dancing between them. Sat far back, dwarfed in that visceral throne was the so called 'Dark Avatar' Unalaq. In his fourteen years in the icy memory of his former home the once prim and proper Unalaq had grown frail and haggard with a sparse, coarse beard. He dressed in a dull blue cloak of thick sealskin, trimmed with furs as well as oversized ramshackle scale armour made from thick, treated leather with silk and bone fastenings. All of it seemed too thick and too broad on the thin, unimposing man, as if it were threatening to swallow him up like the ink black northern sea.

"Sir." The wolf-woman began, prostrate on the floor. "Our disciples in the Western Air Temple report that the hit squad sent for Ms Sato has failed." She answered, her voice trembling in fear. "She is relocating back to the Eastern Air Temple tomorrow. But we have their route."

"Then we will run them into ground." Unalaq rasped slowly as he pulled himself out of his throne. "Activate the nearest attack group and tell them to intercept it."

Akir was in the _Hanapin_'s workshop, now converted into his own personal laboratory. He had reassembled an extensive chemistry set in between Nehal's workbench and tool locker, which he had begun stuffing with scrolls and reference books. On the desk was a bowl filled with a dark, silvery liquid. Akir's hands were clutched over it. He manipulated the liquid like a waterbender, feeling the ebb and flow as he bent it.

"What are you bending?" Zhu-Rong asked as he walked through the open bulkhead. "That does not look like earth."

"It's quicksilver, the only room temperature liquid metal known to man." Akir said, not taking his eye off of the shimmering mass. "Bending it you can feel the push and pull of a liquid as it moves, it's the closest I have come to understanding waterbending, I consider it very advantageous to learn the theory behind any form of bending, even if it is outside my element."

"That is a noble goal." Zhu-Rong interjected casually.

"Thank you." Akir said warmly with a very satisfied smile, reflected back it him in the distorted surface of the quicksilver.

"But isn't quicksilver toxic?" Mari asked, standing fairly far back from him, on instinct.

"Very, I guess it's like playing with fire as well."

"Firebending is about life, the energy, the momentum, it is progress made manifest. To bend fire is to understand it and thus to understand the risk, the urgency and the energy that it is to be alive at a spiritual and mental level." Zhu-Rong answered, his chest swelling proudly.

"I think that's the most you've ever said about anything." Akir said, finally settling the mercury back into its container.

"Most likely. Nehal tells me we are on the outskirts of Republic City." He answered before he walked back out of the workshop.

The _Hanapin_ came down out of the clouds above Republic City. They had waited until the brief window of sunlight had passed to give them a better chance of staying hidden. When she was young and the world still made sense she visited Republic City in its heyday. More Satomobiles than any other place on earth bustled down cobblestone streets and markets provided them with the most exotic goods from around the world. Great institutes like the White Lotus and the Pro-Bending Championships called this place home.

Today it was a wreck. Yue Bay had burst its banks and flooded half the city, nearly submerging the drowned statue of Avatar Aang. Thick spirit vines choked the ruined metropolis, as well as unnatural forests that blanketed the city. The shadowy forms of dark spirits flitted between the shadows of its decrepit, half demolished skyscrapers. In the bay the remains of the United Forces navy sat, mangled and ripped apart by spirits and now enveloped by the creeping vines. Looking down on it now through the slits around the windows of the Hanapin's bridge all Akir could feel was a deep loss, as the only one of them who had lived there. He remembered a dance on Avatar Memorial Island, attending the inauguration of President Reiko and the last days of the city, when impossible spirits wandered into the twilight streets and the mad scramble to evacuate.

As they descended towards the surface the radio began buzzing into life.

"Unidentified Airship, this is the Air Temple Island outpost. You are in a high danger area. Your presence over our outpost is an unacceptable risk to this station and its men. Turn about immediately or you will be charged with trespassing and reckless endangerment." A voice declared over the radio. Whoever it was on the other end of the radio she lacked the practiced politeness of the Western Air Temple's Radio Operators. She was stressed and ragged, her anger fighting back a tired yawn at three in the afternoon.

"What 'll you do, arrest our remains." Nehal retorted.

Akir jammed in next to Nehal so that he could be heard in the radio receiver. "This is Master Lotus Akir, I am on an authorised special research project."

There was a pause for a moment. "We need verification."

"Identification code Omashu-Wing-Laghima-Aang-Kilo Dash two, two eight two." Akir said. "Did you get all that."

"Acknowledged, Master Akir. " A new voice said. "Why are you here?"

"We need to reach the University." Akir answered.

"You'll never make it in an Airship, land and my C.O will discuss it with you on the ground. And land quietly I don't want to die on this bloody rock."

"Did you know about these guys?" Mari asked as she readied for the door.

"I didn't really keep up with troop positions, makes sense that Reiko would want to monitor the city though." Akir answered as he put on his coat.

Nehal gently descended close to the sea on a low setting. She carefully pushed the Airship until it was hovering a few metres above the highest spire of the compound.

Thick chains with small rocks at the end came up from the ground and wrapped around the airship's landing skids before they pulled the ship down to the ground.

Akir stepped out into what had once been the airbending training area. The spinning maze was gone, taken apart and shipped off with the other relics when the city fell. A thin mist of light rain was underway, condensing and dripping off of the gutters around the temple roofs.

Milling about was several United Forces members. Unlike the proud red that officers wore these grizzled soldiers were dressed in washed out fatigues of pale red, green, blue or beige depending on the element they bent, or grey if they were non-benders. They wore thick hooded ponchos and things like heavy scarves and warm fur lined boots to keep the chill out. What had been a serene sanctuary of the world's last airbenders was now a fortified monitoring station. Battlements bristled with the explosive arrows of automatic crossbow emplacements and a huge radio tower was braced against the main building.

Walking out of what had once been the men's dormitories was a Republic officer of fire nation descent carrying a lantern in one hand and an umbrella in the other. His coat hung open revealing a flak jacket and a wool jumper that was slightly too big for him. He wore his receding, greyish hair short aside from a small topknot on the back of his head. He possessed a thick coating of stubble marred by a long scar that crumpled the left side of his mouth into a permanent, lopsided grimace. Beside him was a non-bender with a crossbow who didn't seem overly fond of the moisture dripping off of his cap and a member of the White Lotus adorned with an airbending master's tattoos proudly displayed on her entirely shaved head and a traditional glider-staff. She wore a glider suit under a traditional lotus mantle and a long blue, hooded cloak. She was short and thin with vaguely Water Tribe features and a pair of glasses with a taped up frame.

"Master Lotus Akir." She said with a curteous bow. She sounded young and energetic in contrast with the dreary atmosphere around them.

"Master Lotus Seiko." He responded, returning the bow. The Commander just huffed.

"I'm Colonel Kei-Shek, commander of this base." He announced with a proud tone to his deep and impressive voice. He carried himself with a posture that suggested a refined sort of gentlemanly confidence though his voice was harsh and gravelly with a lower class accent. "I'd rather do this inside, I don't know if you know this but it's cold and wet out here."

"Absolutely, sorry for the bother." Akir answered politely.

Inside was still not much of a luxury. There was a bending generator being charged by a rail thin lightning bender stripped to waist and sweating despite the chill of the room. Lightning crackled every few minutes, casting a frenetic blue light across the room. Maps of the city at every level of detail hung from the walls and banks of electrical and radio equipment. Lockers of gear dotted the wall and thick blackout curtains like the ones back at the Western Air Temple. Small pots and pans sat gathering water from the eternally dripping roof.

"Master Akir and I need to talk, get a drink or something." He said to the lightningbender dismissively as he shook off the umbrella and left it by the door. Seiko pulled off her cloak and hung it on a bolted on coat hook. Without warning she bent up a storm, blowing Akir and his group dry.

"Sorry about that but you really don't want to stay cold and wet for too long." Seiko responded apologetically.

"So you want to go back to school, eh." Kei-Shek teased as he went over to the planning table in the centre of the room. "The University's above water but it'll be a nightmare getting there." He said, pointing to the main map on the table. Large sections of it were blued out or had green patches to show the advancing tide. "Spirit vines have sprouted up all around that part of the city we can't give you any reliable intel."

"What does it matter?" Mari asked, shrugging her shoulders. "You must have maps of the area before Harmonic Convergence."

"Spirits have been actively reforming the terrain in the city, the university might be a sinkhole by now." Seiko answered, leaning heavily on her glider.

"Honestly, Master Akir I'd advise you fly out of here, if you head into the city you're likely going to die for something that isn't even there anymore." Kei-Shek explained as he took a sip of lukewarm, bitter tea.

"That sounds exactly like the job we agreed to." Zhu-Rong observed.

"My friend is correct." Akir began. "We have reason to believe that the RCU library might hold information vital to the war effort."

"So let me guess you'll be wanting one of our irreplaceable, incredibly expensive submarines and a pilot to get you to the city even though I'll probably never see you or it again?" Kei-Shek asked, folding his arms defensively.

"Well I thought you just used boats or something but yes, I'll take a submarine." Akir nodded. Kei-Shek remained unamused.

"The University was near Future Industries' central factory, the parts in there would come in rather useful." Seiko interjected. She winked at Akir.

Kei-Shek looked at her for a moment, clearly annoyed. "Very well, you'll go during the day tomorrow, you can have some spare quarters in the old female dormitories until then." He answered before he fell back into his creaky wooden chair at the edge the table. "Seiko, see to them, will you." He took another sip of the tea.

"So, it's _Master Lotus _now." Akir said, much less formally than usual as they left the main building.

"Things have been going pretty well for me, I have two rooms and a desk, all to myself." Seiko joked.

"Really, a whole desk." He answered. Everyone else simply rolled their eyes. "But seriously, how did you end up out here?" Akir added as they crossed the courtyard, lit dimly by the lantern Seiko carried.

"It was part of my promotion, the Order sent me to the next place on the list to request a Lotus and this was it." She answered. "Not exactly the Western Air Temple but It's home."

"What are you even here for?" Akir pondered as he looked up into the shadows at the massive sensor tower jutting out from the temple's highest roof.

"Monitoring, Republic City has one of the largest concentrations of Dark Spirits in the world." Akir grabbed Seiko by the arm and whirled her around until she was facing him his metallic eyepiece shone ominously in the dark for a moment.

"We both know there's nothing special about the spirits in republic city and radar isn't going to tell us anything new." He whispered.

"Promise me you won't tell our soldiers."

"Of course."

"All of you."

"I won't" Zhu Rong answered.

"On my honour as a Kyoshi warrior."

"Oh like I'm coming back here again." Nehal huffed bitterly.

Seiko sighed for a moment; she looked around to make sure there were no soldiers around to hear her. "The Earth Queen's been trying to annex the city under settler's rights, the same way the Republic was founded. As long as there are United Republic citizens within the agreed boundaries of the city she can't do it legally." She looked around again for soldiers. "I'm telling you this because I trust you Akir. It's a hard posting here, if the soldiers ever heard they were just here because of a legal technicality morale would crumble."

"Flameo." Akir gasped.

"That seems like a waste of men." Zhu-Rong observed. "The Earth Kingdom could not possibly hold this city, even if they could purge the spirits."

"No, my friend but they could place a token force somewhere like we have and keep it as their territory after the war." Seiko responded.

"And you still believe there will be a world after this?" Akir asked. He knew the reports but he wondered, this far out so far from the supply lines did Seiko.

"I have to."


	4. Chapter 4: Detour

Comet was sat in a tiny metal cell with her hands chained to the table. If Mari could see her now she might just have keeled over. Every day she told Comet to stay out of trouble and every day she tried not to. And here she was, in a cell. The handcuffs cut into her wrists, chaffing them awfully and the cold, washed out light of a glowstone kept her from returning to sleep as the clock ticked over to 5:00 am.

The whiskered police captain came in wiping a thick yellow fluid from the tip of his catfish moustache.

"Sorry for the delay ma'am the Touched woman spat bile at me." He said groaning. He wasn't exactly a young man and it was just past the end of his shift. "I'm Captain Ren, United Forces Military Police."

A short nebbish looking old fire nation man with wild white hair sprouting from the sides of his head barged past the police chief. He was dressed in a crooked and crumpled set of White Lotus vestments, put on in a hurry, aside from a pair of dingy slippers. He was kindly looking with a genuine smile that made him look like some little girl's favourite grandfather somewhere.

"I'm Lotus Brother Lifa." He said, sliding into the chair besides Comet. "I'm your assigned legal counsel."

"Am I being charged?" Comet asked, terrified. She instinctively pulled against her chains until it felt as if either the cuffs or her wrists were about to break.

"Not likely." The captain said as he took a seat, groaning wearily. "But we have to call in a lawyer just in case. Now why don't you just walk us through the events as they occurred to you." Ren pulled out a small notepad and looked at her over the top of it with green beady little eyes half hooded by tired looking eyelids.

"I was woken up by a loud slam. Then my wall broke apart. The earthbending one leapt through. Asami, miss Sato shocked him and then the bird woman. Then that other guy threw a table at her. I tricked him into stabbing a power cord and then you walked in." Comet blurted, by the end she was so out of breath the edges of her vision had begun to fade.

"Well, we'll have to wait for Miss Sato to get out of the Healer's to corroborate you." Ren explained. "Until then we have to hold you as a suspect."

"Suspect, what do you think I'm a table-bender or something." Comet retorted.

"The young lady is right, you can't hold her without at least evidence of guilt." Lifa protested.

"We found a hairpin stiletto in that coral guy's side." The captain pointed to her hair, held up by only the one pin. "Yours."

"Yes and I lodged it into the guy trying to kill Asami Sato." Comet shouted defensively. She stood up sharply, nearly nocking the chair away. "I nearly died saving her, and where were you."

"That weapon seems like it might come in very handy for an assassin, and the man you stabbed was a legally empowered bounty hunter. Meanwhile you have an unregistered weapon and a large amount of money for an unemployed woman your age." Ren explained.

"You can't seriously think she did this." Lifa protested again.

"No, I don't." Ren huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off a headache. "But Miss Sato is one of the most powerful citizens we have left. Commissioner Hanza has made it quite clear that I can look forward to an early retirement if I don't do this properly." Ren explained.

"You can't honestly think those freaks are real bounty hunters." Comet protested.

Ren's eyes narrowed and he clenched his hands into white-knuckled fists. "My daughter was Touched, I'd appreciate it if you not call them freaks." Ren said. His voice was cold and harsh and gravelly. Comet immediately sensed her misstep. What had been an impersonal duty for Ren she had now made fiercely personal, more than that she felt ashamed, embarrassed to have resorted to stereotypes so quickly.

"I'm sorry I-"

"Enough, I'm going to take you to the lockup and then I'm going to go home."

Comet had missed the midday light when she was woken up in her cell. The cot was as hard as stone as the many tender spots all along her back attested. To one side of her was a haggard looking drunken business woman with her hair askew. She smelt of sugar wine and she had a vomit stain down her front. Her nose was broken and bruised. To the other side was a particularly muscular woman with eagles tattooed up her arms. The noise that woke her was Asami, knocking a cane against the bars, the metal clanging against metal. She had a massive bruise across the left side of her face, even after the best efforts of the healer , her left arm was broken and she was obviously leaning on the surgical steel cane very heavily. An MP was stood next to her with a set of keys in hand.

"You're the one who saved me. I remember you fought off that coral girl. Release them Officer." The officer nodded and opened the jail cell doors.

"Sorry about the confusion, my name's Asami." The tycoon said. "What's yours?" Asami asked as she walked extended a hand to Comet.

"As if you had to tell me your name Miss Sato ma'am, I read everything I can about you." She said as she snatched up Asami's hand and shook it eagerly. "My name's Comet, of Kyoshi Island."

"Well Comet, thank you for saving me. What are you going to do now."

"Well I wanted to go to the Eastern Air Temple, it sounds so glamourous." Comet answered starry eyed.

"I'm going there, I don't suppose you'd enjoy a lift, would you, Comet?" Asami asked playfully.

"Yes!" Comet's answer came out as a high pitched squeal. "I'll just get my stuff and I can go with you, just wait a sec, please."

The Future Industries flagship soared gracefully above the clouds and over the ancient canyon known as the Great Divide. Despite the war its bright white hull was still as clean as it was the day it first floated off on a maiden voyage long forgotten. These days the Airship housed a full fifth of the Future Industries workforce in relative comfort, though at the cost of some of its luxury. The bridge now had a typing pool and receptionist for instance.

The cavernous bridge was full of green glass windows. Even with the thick metal slats over them the glimpses of fluffy peaceful clouds wafting by was one of the most beautiful things Comet had seen in quite a while.

Asami was hunched over the coffee table in the bridge's lounge area handling a stack of paper work. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she quickly scribbled down some sort of equation next to a schematic for some piece of machinery or another. Despite her injuries and the obvious discomfort in the way she was sat Asami carried on, judging by the workload she didn't seem to have much of a choice. Comet, meanwhile was just kind of sat around gawping at the architecture.

"I thought that after an hour of air time you would have stopped being so amazed." Asami said, looking up over her stack of papers.

"You know I got to the Western Air Temple in the back of a rusty cargo blimp." She said. "I must say this is a big step up." Comet responded, a little bit embarrassed.

"So what are you going to do when we get to the Eastern Air Temple?"

"By the time we get there I'll be entitled to a small fortune. My aunt said to become a researcher or something safe like that."

Before Asami could answer the proximity alarms in the ceiling went off bathing the bridge in red light whilst a claxon sounded.

"Miss Sato we've got Spirits inbound." The helmsman yelled from his pilot's perch. "I'm gonna put her down in the Divide, and turn off the engines."

"Do it." Asami said, springing up. She immediately regretted that and clutched for her cane. The entire bridge tipped wildly as the helmsman through the craft straight down into the valley. The desks began to slide along the deck and most people ended up falling over or clinging to the railings. Glasses fell from tipping tables and shattered. The gently synchronised hum of the lifting engines slowed and sputtered out as the helmsman cut the power. They fell through layers and layers of cloud. In the windows the ground was rearing up on them worryingly quickly.

At the last moment the helmsman reignited the lift engines and pulled the craft level. The groan of tortured metal sounded throughout the bridge. Out of nowhere a jagged shaft of earth sprouted out of the ground. The airship's hull tore open like wet paper aside from the screech of metal being rent asunder. The glass shattered into millions of pieces and caved in the front of the bridge. The helmsman and his perch disappeared into the rubble in a scream and splash of blood. The gas envelope ripped open and the airship went from a graceful lighter than air cruiser to a thousand ton hunk of twisted metal and flaming aviation fuel. The ship's carcass crashed into the ground violently. The whole ship shuddered and shook as the craft tipped starboard. Gouts of fire exploded into the bridge as the banks of engines on the airship's side were torn apart and detonated against the hull. Flaming pools of fuel-alcohol spewed across the control deck, dousing unfortunate crewmen and typists in fire.

Comet was thrown against her padded chair and stress vomited as she saw a woman on fire flail screaming on the floor. She could see the flesh crumple and fall off her body like tallow, hear a scream of greater agony than she thought imaginable and smell the pork-like odour of a person cooked alive, and feel the heat of the fire get closer and closer to her.

Comet was huddled up, knees clutched to her chest on the uneven floor as she hyperventilated. Not five minutes ago she was making polite conversation with a titan of industry and now all she could look at was the blackened husk of a woman who served her tea. Out beyond was a massive gaping hole in the hull exposing the dark, sandy canyon.

"Holy hog-monkeys!" A young, pallid man with a thin frame and a small smattering of patchy stuble said with a high pitched not quite broken voice. His uniform's hat was slightly crooked and his right sleeve had a scorch mark on it. According to his name tag he was Serviceman Third Class Romu He staggered through the nearly sideways bulkhead leading into the other compartments of the ship. Smoke billowed out behind him.

Catching sight of the fires raging through the bridge he bent the water in the coolant pipes he knew were nestled in the hull of the ship. They disgorged themselves onto the fire, splashing it but also extinguishing most of the fire.

"Ma'am, uh ma'ams are you okay?" He said with a strange twang.

"Yeah, I think I am." Asami said as she pulled herself up. "But Comet's pretty shaken up." She said putting a hand on the trembling young woman.

"Ma'am, there are fires all over the ship. I just came from engineerin' in the stern and I haven't seen any one livin' on the way." He said quickly and nervously. "I bled the primary fuel tank but the pumps on the secondary one's jammed, if the fire reaches it we'll explode…. Well explode more than we already have."

"We have to get to the cargo hold, we always keep some emergency gear there." Asami said. Her stance was faltering but her cane kept her standing, just about. She tottered over to the bulkhead and awkwardly tried to squeeze her even more broken arm through the opening.

"Ms Sato, I'm sorry ma'am but you should really get to safety, me an' Comet here can get the equipment, you just get outside." Romu answered, jovially.

"Will you know what to get?" Asami asked as she hobbled for the hole in the ship.

"Anything that isn't broken." Comet yelled as she jumped through the nearly sideways bulkhead.

"We'll be back soon." Romu shouted over the sound of a crackling fire.

The main corridor was a crumpled mess. Upended tables littered the twisted hall and warped panels hung from the ceiling by thin wires. The heat and smoke of oily fires raged in over compartments, so hot that the rubber seals around the doors had melted shut. Strewn about were bent and broken bodies, their limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Comet tried to look away from their faces, every one of them pulled back into a frightened rictus.

"It's a wreck in here." Comet gasped as she tried to avoid acrid clouds of smoke.

They reached the cargo hold, mounted in the rear near the engineering department. The bulkhead was bent open and inside the mangled bodies of other engineers hung out. "I knew those guys, when we started diving they clung to their posts. Don't know how I survived"

"How did you?" Comet asked as she saw a limb hanging out of the hatch above her.

"How did I what?" Romu asked, not turning around.

They lumbered into the hold. It was a mess. Crates were smashed to tinder and a jeep had been torn out of the straps that held it down. In the tumble it had been thrown about, snapping an axel off and absolutely demolishing a crate of pickled cabbage corp cabbages. There were still a few boxes here and there that were still functional.

"How did you survive the crash? Asami and I only survived because we had cushions to crash into; you were stuck in the engine room." Comet asserted as she tried to find an emergency kit amongst the strewn about cans and miscellaneous tools.

"A quick application of waterbending, I made a bubble of water to cushion my landing." Romu answered.

"Really, you aren't wet?" Comet asked. Her eyes went wide and she made for the bulkhead. Comet sprinted as best she could over the lopsided, corpse-strewn terrain. She threw herself through the open bulkhead as a scythe of water nearly cut the hatch off its hinges. She stopped dead in her tracks when a bright spotlight poured in through the holes in the ship. The sound of footsteps clanging against the deckplates forced her onwards.

"Asami! Miss Sato! Romu's the saboteur!" She yelled, running out of the gash in the side of the ship. The most bizarre sensation seized her. It was like a full body cramp digging into her body until she couldn't move a muscle. She could hear her heartbeat thrumming in her head and it felt as if she were being choked.

She tried to force herself forwards but instead she fell to her hands and knees. Tears of pain dripped into the cold, dry dirt of the canyon. Asami was stood there bound and gagged. An elderly man with shards of onyx growing out of his skin held a pointed shard of stone up to her neck with his bending. Behind them was an ugly kit bashed airship built primarily from a dinged up old CC-39 airship, obviously stolen from the airship graveyards outside of Ba Sing Se. Cabbage Corp airships were often….economical in construction and it showed in the parts of the craft that were still original. The paint had long since flaked away and rust was beginning to show. The low power motor had been replaced with a pair of old engines in the back and two more stuck out from the sides, attached by welded on biplane wings with large fuel tanks made from old propane canisters stowed in between the wings. Rigging and netting around the faded green envelope held down large metal crates of outboard storage. There were metal bars welded to the outside of the viewports and shutter curtains mounted on the inside.

"You were supposed to kill her in the hold." He rasped. "I only just had enough time to get this one when she started screaming."

"She saw through the disguise. Twenty yuans for the jumpsuit and nothin' to show for it" 'Romu' sulked.

"Unalaq will reward us with more than twenty yuans when we return Sato." The stone-skinned man said.

"Take the girl to the hold whilst you've got her." The old man declared. "Unalaq might want a slave, or he can throw her to the spirits."

Romu lifted Comet up by the scruff of her jacket and set her walking towards the airship. "You can walk yourself or I'll bend you there if I have to." He hissed into her ear when she tried to resist. He pulled the pins from her hair and shoved his hands down her pockets.

"Put your hands out." Romu commanded. Nervously Comet complied, presenting him her balled up fists. Romu tied the rope around her wrists and then tipped her backwards into the hold. She fell over and bruised her back on the metal deck. Next the old man threw Asami in. The hold was nothing but bare metal aside from a tarp in the centre of the room. There were yellowish brown stains on the floor and walls and in one disturbing case the ceiling. Large crates pirated from other airships and looted from wanderer convoys were strapped to the floor as well as a few miscellaneous cans stacked on top of them. They could hear the airship's many engines begin to sputter into life. Unlike the smooth running, state of the art engines on Asami's airship these worn down, oversized and poorly assembled engines shook and shuddered, causing the whole airship to buck and wobble as the unbalanced propellers threatened to throw the airship off course.

Asami managed to pull her gag loose with her good hand and spat out a bit of blood and a fragment of a tooth. "We have to get free, the North Pole's not so inviting these days."

"Don't worry, my Aunt taught me this." Comet said eagerly. "When that guy tied me up I kept my hands horizontal, it makes your wrists just wide enough to slip your hands through." Comet explained as her hands just about slipped through.

Even above the constant clatter of the engines an unearthly screech sounded through the canyon. It was the spirit that had forced the airship down in the first place. It seemed to be growing more and more affronted by the noisy little airship in its midst.

"Yeah we really need a way out of here." Asami protested direly as she tried to sit up.

The hazy radar screen showed the blurry, mass of the spirit closing in on them. "Get back there and calm that spirit." The elderly man said from his captain's chair.

"Whatever you say old man." Romu huffed. He headed back into the rear of the ship.

"Footsteps!" Asami hissed.

Comet was standing with her hands freed when Romu walked into the hold. She charged him, reaching the tarp in the middle of the room. But before she could close the distance between them Romu was doing the stiff, straight armed motions of his unique Foggy Swamp style bloodbending. Comet contorted groaned before Romu made her slam herself into the ground. The pain was intolerable; tears filled her vision as she was left crying on the rough cloth sheet.

"You know I put this tarp down so that when I burst open ignorant fools like you your mess doesn't go too far." Romu said in a low sadistic tone, though he never quite lost the squeakiness in his voice nor his accent. "But I'm definitely gonna cover your friend in every last bit of you." He said as he slowly edged towards her.

Comet snarled defiantly and yanked the tarp. On the smooth metal floor it slid far enough to take Romu off his feet. He managed a yelp of surprise as he fell and whacked his head against the corner of a metallic first aid kit on the table next to him. He was still dazed with a bloody gash on the side of his head. Comet didn't think, not really, the primal part of her brain that was still a desperate cave dweller fending off a moose-lion took over. She sprung up off the floor and the med kit. She dove on top of him. Screaming wildly, with tears in her eyes she bashed the steel can against his head again and again until case was dented in and half busted and parts of Romu's skull and brains were stuck to the lid. He twitched and bled his last onto the tarp. Some of his life blood overflowed the sheet and poured out onto the floor. Another bloodstain for the collection.

Comet rolled off of him and kicked herself away crying. Asami picked herself up and crawled over to the sobbing girl as best she could.

"Comet, I'm so sorry that happened." She said, putting a hand on the young girl's shoulder. "I know it hurts, no one can do what you did easily." Asami steeled herself as she pushed Comet up until she was more or less sitting up. "But we need to get control of this airship and I can't do this alone." She added, even then there was a tenderness to her voice.

"I-I know." Comet said as she pulled herself up. She stared at Romu's body for a long while. Her face was just blank, not even she knew what she was feeling. A part of her didn't even believe it was happening, like she was just a consciousness watching through someone else's eyes. "I want to get out of here."

"Wait." Asami said sharply. "We need to throw him out." She said, her head lowered almost ashamed.

"I'm not doing that. Normal people don't do that." Comet balked, she backed away from Asami and the corpse until she was almost against the wall of the compartment.

"No normal people don't, but if we don't give that spirit something it'll come after us." Asami retorted desperately. She used her good hand to haul Romu up. For a moment his eyes lolled down from his eye sockets. His green eyed gaze met Comet's for a moment. She felt cold and empty as if someone had walked over her grave.

Numbly she picked up the other side. They carried him over to the end of the cargo hold, to the trap door on the belly of the ship. Asami limped over to a bottle of lighter fluid and liberally applied doused Romu in it.

"What are you doing?" Comet yelled, confused.

"The fire will help get the creature's attention. Don't ask me how I know that just find me a few matches." Asami answered, even more desperately.

Comet's hands shook hard enough to rattle the box as she handed it off. Romu lit up like a candle. With the pull of a lever he tumbled out the back of the craft. In the dim light of the moon they saw the luminous beast break away from its pursuit and dive after the flaming body.

Asami was finally able to cut her hands free. Her left arm missed its sling, even hanging limply by her side it hurt. She could tell the bone wouldn't set right without a healer.

They walked onto the bridge. Whilst very few airships could profess to be as prim and proper as they had been before Harmonic Convergence this bridge was a testament to decay. Pipes and wires hung loosely in bundles from the ceiling, thick curtains were fitted around the view ports. The control consoles were a hodge podge of various ill-fitting components in varying states of disrepair. The room was over all grubby aside from a scrap metal shrine to Unalaq.

The Old man heard footsteps on the metal floor as he jockeyed to keep the ship under control. "What took you so long, I thought that spirit was gonna swallow us whole." He said with a hoarse chuckle as he turned his chair around. He stood up with surprising spryness for a man of at least sixty. There wasn't so much as a single rock to bend.

"Please." Comet begged with a weary note of exhaustion. "Just give up."

"You killed him didn't you?" The old man asked in his cold gravelly voice. Asami and Comet exchanged a momentary glance. The old man knew what that meant. "Then I can't surrender."

He rolled back his sleeves, revealing growths of glossy black stone. Grimacing he whirled through the motions of a two fisted punch and shot them out at Comet and Asami. They tore out of him with the awful sound of flesh ripping. They left bloody holes straight down to the muscle up and down his arms. Comet and Asami both dove for the floor as the obsidian lumps thumped huge dents into the back wall.

Grimacing the old man pulled the rocks loose. They flew at the intruders again. Comet and Asami rolled out of the way. His stance was beginning falter and the blood pouring from his wounds would not abate. Asami forced herself up and tackled him back into his chair. He struggled and strained but eventually he fell back into his chair all the same.

Comet grabbed the first bit of rope they could find and tied him to the chair as well as binding his hands.

"Do you have any bandages?" Asami asked breathily as she grappled with the controls to keep the Airship from tipping too much. The old man merely spat in her face.

"I've got holes in my damn arms you think it makes a difference if we got bandages?" He shouted back. There was a sort of finality in his voice as he felt the blood dripping off his clothes. He could feel himself weakening. He felt a fool, cementing his own death with a move he never should have pulled. _The kid would have known better_, he thought.

"Why did you crash the blimp?" Comet asked over his shoulder.

"Our master told us too. He said he wanted you captured or killed before you reached the Eastern Air Temple" he said to Asami.

"Why?"

"Same way the Republic's got your daddy designing stuff from his cell, Unalaq wanted your know how, or he wanted you gone."

"How do you know about my father." Asami's cool demeanour was entirely shattered as the shadow of Hiroshi's memory loomed large in her mind. "The news said he was never evacuated."

"We have loyal eyes in every one of your 'safe havens' and they're all going to be looking for you." The old man managed before he passed out.

The old man opened his eyes in the spirit world. In here he was still a young man with golden hair and soft tan skin. It was a dark and barren hellscape besides a massive flame lighting up the world. Countless spirits roosted near it, huddled around its intangible warmth. He wandered towards it, heedless of the spirits that watched him like predators monitoring their prey. In the centre stood before the fire was Unalaq, wreathed in black with blood red energy arcing off of him.

"Report." He commanded simply, though when he spoke the thunderous tremor of Vaatu spoke with him.

"Sato survived the crash but she overpowerd us, she took our airship." The old man said weakly. He could still feel the blood dripping down his arms, even in the spirit world. "I was wounded, they have my body restrained but I only told them what you instructed me." He said weakly, though with a rising note of pride.

"Thank you for your sacrifice, Brother." Unalaq said before he disappeared and took the flame with him. Without the soothing light of the fire the Spirits returned to their maddened, hateful state. They tore the Old man's projection apart in seconds. Back on the airship his body shook and shuddered before his faded hazel eyes rolled back up into his head.

"What's happening to him?!" Comet yelled as she saw him thrash against his restraints before he went completely limp and lifeless like a jellyfish plucked out of the water.

Asami checked his pulse, it was faint and infrequent, growing weaker and more feeble as she monitored it. "I don't know but I think he's dying." Sure enough a few minutes later his breathing slowed to a complete stop. "He's….he's dead."

"I'm….I'm going to go find our quarters or something." Comet said, hurrying off the bridge.

Comet had found the quarters, cramped though they may be. They were extremely lived in, almost everything reminded her of the men who had lived and died on it. Romu's normal clothes, a tattered leather jacket and a pair of thick wool trousers were flung haphazardly over his bunk like he had changed in a hurry. There was blood, vomit and tears stained into her jacket which smelt of smoke and trapped sweat. It was only after the shock had worn off that she yanked it away, disgusted. Immediately she regretted the idea, of all the things Unalaq's disciples had done to get the ship airworthy the heating system had not been one of them. She huddled under the thick, scratchy bed sheets to hold on to her warmth.

Asami walked back in. She had found her sling and her cane. She had a mass of green cloth over her shoulder. "I figured you might not want to wear that jacket anymore." She said as she put the long emerald coat down next to her. "It's a captain's coat, I found it in a locker back in the cargo hold." Asami explained.

"Thanks." Comet answered glumly as she pulled the slightly oversized coat on.

"Oh and I found these in Romu's pocket's before we dumped him overboard." Asami said, handing back Mari's hair pins. Comet squealed and pulled her in for an ill-advised hug. For a moment, floating around in a flying scrapheap, everything felt like it was going to be alright.


	5. Chapter 5: Welcome to Republic City

Akir was stood on the balcony whilst the rest of his expedition was asleep. Nehal insisted on sleeping in her quarters on the _Hanapin_ which was currently a field-canteen judging by the number of drunken soldiers sitting about on its cargo ramp, bathed in the dimmest light they could find, spilling out of old curtains. Zhu-Rong, on the other hand didn't even bother with a bed.

"So what's the mission." Seiko said as she appeared on the balcony, wafting up behind him like a breeze.

"The same one I've been trying to mount for years."

"Oh, Operation Sword of Dawn." Seiko chuckled.

"I still think that was a cool name." Akir responded with a toothy smile.

"Where's your army, and your airfleet and the massive research staff." She teased.

"Back at the Western Temple." He quipped.

"You do realise you'll almost certainly die." Seiko said, quashing the light tone of their conversation under the crushing weight of impending mortality.

"I know." Akir answered, he seemed no more pleased about it than anyone else. "But we all die someday, probably sooner than we'd like. I'd rather people would tell the tale of Akir's Lost Expedition, as opposed to Akir's Bad Trip Down the Stairs"

"Ah, still trying to live up to the heroes in your history books." She nodded, faintly amused. She put a hand on his. For a minute he was a teenage initiate sweating in the heat of the Si Wong Summer when they first met. She had hair then, impossibly long and silken brown curls that draped over her back like a cape. She put a hand to his cheek, running up his stubbled jaw until she pushed his eyepatch out of the way revealing the smooth skin covering an empty socket. Akir gasped but for once he couldn't think of a single thing to say. He felt naked without the patch, the soft skin over his orbit prickled in the cold breeze of the drizzly night. "I always wanted to know what was under there. Kind of disappointing actually." She shrugged. She yanked him in for a quick peck. "For good luck." She explained.

Straightening his patch Akir answered her. "Luck isn't something we have in abundance, save it for someone else." He responded with a measure of false charm. He walked back inside and prepared for bed.

It was ten in the morning and the sky was just beginning to lighten. Kei-Shek and a few of his men were walking them down to the docks. Stood by his submarine was a deeply tanned man wearing the bottom half of his uniform and a t-shirt. He was a short, powerfully built man covered in cords of sinewy muscle. His head was completely shaven save for a traditional warrior's wolf-tail and his head was covered by a blue field-cap. He possessed bright yellow eyes and a pair of blue dragons tattooed up his arms. As the wind turned his odour of sweat, nicotine and fuel-alcohol blew onto them.

Behind them was the submarine, about ten metres long and rather wide with a flat top to serve as a wet deck. It was a dull black with a white underbelly similar to an orca-seal. The front of the submarine was taken up by a sturdy glass dome protected by a pair of large bull-bars at the top and bottom. It posessed canards, fins and rudders at the fore and aft as well as a large engine bulging smoothly outwards towards the rear.

"So you're the man who wants to get me killed." He said with a surprising amount of warmth in his voice. It was scratchy and low pitched though he spoke quickly.

"Please excuse Lieutenant Hiro, it's not every day we actually have to observe protocol." Kei-Shek interrupted.

"Oh yeah, we're really spit and polish." Nehal teased, leaning in for a handshake. "Besides we already met." She said with a palpably dirty chuckle. Mari nearly gagged as she saw the leering look on both their faces grow. Their slight laughter carried on an uncomfortably long time.

"I believe we are meant to be entering Republic City." Zhu-Rong interjected.

Nehal shot them a look and then let go of him. "Absolutely, let's head out."

"Well, Nehal you showed me yours. Now I'll show you mine." Hiro said, gesturing to the submarine, fortunately. "Alright, I should warn you it smells like heavy chemicals and stale….everything, in there and it isn't entirely my fault."

They clambered onto the wet deck of the submarine and slid down the narrow hatch into the main compartment. As Hiro promised the ship was incredibly cramped. Though it was designed to accommodate as many as ten passengers it was still a narrow craft filled with valves and piping as well as instrumentation jutting at every turn. It was hot and stuffy, too narrow to stretch one's legs and too low to stand.

"Okay then we're ready to pull away." Hiro said, more to himself than anyone else. The submarine set off at ten knots on the long journey across Yue Bay. The bay was calm for the moment. No spirits to be seen and no particularly rough weather though Hiro knew it took very little these days to set the bay into a roiling sea filled with shadowy horrors from above and below.

"Why are we still on the surface!?" Akir shouted over the thrum of the engines. "This is a submersible, shouldn't we you know, submerge!?"

"We only have enough air for a half hour. We stay on the surface as long as possible." Hiro yelled back from his cramped little bucket seat at the front of the ship. The glass bubble in front of him was filled with the dark and murky water of the bay, frothing towards the top as the bow wave broke over it and washed over the top of the submarine.

There wasn't much in the way of conversation, Zhu-Rong was locked in deep thought. Or sleeping, it was hard to tell with those thick goggles of his. Mari sat hunched over by the low ceiling, she was going over the armoury she had strapped to herself and Nehal looked to all the world like a little girl in a candy shop as she looked at the countless gauges and dials as if they held the secret to enlightenment in their readings. Akir just stewed in his worry and hoped they wouldn't notice. In the claustrophobic tin can of the submarine Akir truly realised what he had been trying not to believe. He was likely going to die today.

The decrepit, half sunken base of the Suki Memorial suspension bridge signalled to Hiro that they were now around the harbour district, presently swallowed up by the sea. "All right we're nearing the city proper; we'll dive and follow the streets up to the Dragon Flats Borough." The air breathing engine cut out, leaving the submarine eerily quiet, aside from the sound of water lapping over the deck. For a moment Akir's heart raced as he heard water rushing in. Thankfully it was only the ballast tanks filling as the submarine sunk under the surface of the water. Lights surrounding Hiro's dome blinked on. It was almost surreal to see the streets smothered in a watery tomb. The powerful lights of the submarine struggled to push through the silt laden water. Behind the murky waters the old buildings of Downtown were slowly eroding and being overgrown by moss and coral. Small fish flitted about in front of them. Old rusted satomobiles sat on the road as if they had just been parked; their proud weight anchored them to the cobbled streets. Old street signs hung from lampposts, though they were mostly illegible Akir still knew that the next left took you up along Shirshu Boulevard to the Earth Kingdom Cultural Centre. It felt odd seeing the streets like this, as if flying over them like a wafting cloud.

"Alright we're making good progress, when we surface you have to get out immediately, I'll find a safe place to shore up and radio you my location." Hiro said as he gazed out into the urban abyss.

The submarine surfaced in between a half dilapidated warehouse and an old workshop. Hiro unlocked the hatch and swivelled his chair around. "Good luck." Hiro gulped mightily before he continued speaking "If you don't come back in ten hours…. I have orders to head home."

Akir nodded and clambered out onto the deck. A spool of wire mounted on his left arm shot out and buried itself deep into the brickwork. He swung against the wall and scaled the side of the warehouse and into what had once been the foreman's office via an open window. Mari grit her teeth and threw herself at the wall, she dug a pair of daggers deep into the wall, like a pair of climbing spikes. Despite the weight of her armour and weaponry she managed to throw herself up the wall with only the force of her python-like arms, loping up the wall with swift powerful swings like a goat-gorilla. Zhu-Rong used the small holes Mari's daggers had left and the natural handholds the uneven brickwork produced to crawl up the side like a spider-rat.

"Here." Hiro said handing her a ruggedized radio box. She slung it over her chest. "Good luck, again I guess."

"Thanks, good luck to you as well." She said before she gathered the air around her and leapt up through the window in a gust of wind and landed straight on her feet.

"Check. Check." Hiro's voice crackled over the radio set.

"I'm here, the immediate area shows no spirits, we'll check back in thirty minutes, I repeat thirty minutes." Nehal answered into the clunky receiver before she clicked it back into the radio set.

Akir swept dust covered paperwork and numerous little curios from the long gone foreman's desk and rolled out a laminated map. He pulled out a small glowstone to fill the dark, dingy room with a meagre light to read by. "We're approximately ten clicks to the south of the University's central campus. If we move quickly and quietly we might be able to get to the undercity via the Morishita Grove subway station." He said, bringing up a smaller map of the underground tunnels and sewer pipes. "From there we can follow maintenance shafts and subway tunnels to the Campus Street outlet."

"What if the tunnels are flooded?" Mari asked, looking over the map keenly.

"Hold our breath I suppose." Akir answered as he piled his maps back into his satchel.

The loading bay was full of half submerged machinery, slicked and shiny with a film of oil floating above the dirty floodwater. The opposite side of the Warehouse had at one point featured a large window pane two floors high. Now it was shattered to make way for a massive tree branch. Despite the lack of light it was a mighty growth, most likely springing off from a spirit vine. A pair of sparrow-bats were hopping about on one of the outer limbs.

"Alright, we need to go north, that tree looks like it can hold our weight." Akir said, for once pleased with his slight build. "Unless you got into my sweetroles." Gingerly Akir clambered out onto the branches. The process of shimmying along the branch into the department store next door was going alright until he heard a mournful groaning come from far above him. He looked up to see a massive spirit floating above the city like a storm cloud. Bioluminescence all along its sides lit it up the abyssal creature like some sort of deep sea fish grown to monstrous proportions. It was a shapeless thing with glowing spots that might have been eyes clustered haphazardly on the surface of its cluttered and chaotic form, shifting and moving slightly as it redistributed it's mass, some parts growing out of another whilst certain branch like extremities retracted within their parent limbs.

"By the Sands?" Nehal gasped, pearing out of the window after him.

Akir didn't answer, for a moment he didn't even dare move as he hid under shrubbery like a rat hiding from a gilacorn. It didn't seem to notice him, he supposed it was like expecting lion-turtle to notice an ant. Slowly he worked up the nerve to move across the branches until he was looking through the glass and into the department store. In the dark the grubby window only just about allowed him to make out the shape of headless figures stood stock still along the length of the corridor. Mannequins, he hoped. Carefully he cracked the metal frame out of the wall and lowered it to the ground with his bending.

"Come on, it's open." He said from across the tree. Quickly the three scurried after and into the store. A black and white tiled floor was covered with a thick layer of dust. It had not been a very upmarket store by any means though the faded, moth eaten old clothes that sat on dirty mannequins still spoke of a lost lustre that the city once had. Leaning over a rusted balcony Akir saw a crushed in stair case, smashed by a fallen chandelier that now sat as a twisted mess of tarnished brass and a million pieces of glass sloshing about in waist deep water. Half the roof had collapsed in, piling onto the balcony and the storefront below in a mess of rotted wood and soggy plaster.

"So….you and Hiro, eh." Akir said as they began walking through the ruined shop. "Didn't think he was your type."

"Really…." Nehal said with a slightly amused grin. "He's strong and he's good with machines, I like someone who can keep up with me." She added confidently. "What about you Mari?" She said turning to the giant islander to divert the conversation.

"I take what I can get, not as if I've ever found a man who can keep up with all _this_." She said, proudly flexing her bicep.

"Then you haven't looked very far." Zhu-Rong said from the rear.

Akir and Nehal laughed and Mari blushed like a heavily armed schoolgirl, fortunately her burning cheeks were mostly concealed by her thick makeup.

Before they could say anymore the damaged, half-collapsed roof fully collapsed. With a mighty clattering the decayed materials fell off of the metal framework like rotten flesh finally falling off of a carcass until it was a loose, damp heap of rubbish up to the knee.

"Now what?" Nehal said as she accidently put her boot in a pile of debris. "We don't have a convenient tree around here, this time."

"The support beams." Akir said, pointing up to the rusted grid-work of metal that once helped to hold up the roof. "According to the maps the next building is a floor lower than this one, we should be able to jump it."

"Do the maps mention anything about whether it can handle all of us jumping onto it?" Mari asked.

"Um….. no." Akir used his metal cable to yank himself up onto the beam.

"Excellent." Mari said nonchalantly. At a colossal six foot nine she merely had to put her long muscular arms up and hop slightly to reach the rusted beam. It croaked and groaned and she lifted herself up onto it, as if she were riding a horse.

Akir tottered along the beam. He reached the edge, crawling out nervously on the last fragile scraps of the roof. "Mari, we don't have to worry about the roof…." He said slowly.

Mari scooted along the rusted beam until she was looking over his shoulder.

The building was demolished, shattered down to its foundations by the spirit vines. Stretching back as far as they could see in the shadowy twilight was a mass of vines and trees that consumed that whole section of the city and engulfed it in an otherworldly jungle.

"Oh crap." Mari breathed.

Nehal and Zhu-Rong jumped up to the edge to see what was going on.

"Kei-Shek was right, the entire district's covered in spirit vines." Nehal said as she looked over the expanse of greenery.

"Are there alternate routes." Zhu-Rong said.

"We would have to divert for hours, sooner or later we'd run into something." Akir said.

From down below a splashing sound drew their attention. There was a man carrying a dipped lantern as he ran down the narrow streets. He was short and fat with wild, grey-fleched and dirty hair trapped in eight ponytails bound up by faded blue strips of cloth, as was his thick beard. He was dressed in a black and brown set Pro-Bending training gear, reinforced with pieces of scrap metal stitched into the thick padding and fur lined, knee high boots. He wore an 'x' shaped set of bandoliers each holding a motorcycle's fuel tank strapped over his back like a beetle's wing casing's and with pieces of a satomobile's tyres serving as shoulder armour. He was carrying a huge sack, stuffed with boxes and cans, their impressions bulging out of the side. With a weary exhausted motion he rolled it off of his shoulders and assumed a stance. With fluid steps and surprisingly gentle motions he bent the plants out of the way exposing a well-worn path. He dragged the sack after him, obviously tired.

"I think we just found our alternate route." Akir said as he jumped off the side of the building with his cable around him. Nehal wafted down gently on her own breeze, blowing up a spray of ankle high flood water. Zhu-Rong risked a quick burst of flame to act as a jet, slowing his decent. Mari, a consummate warrior simply leapt from the three-floors high ledge and rolled off of her feet despite the weight of her thick steel armour. She made large splash that threw dirty water all over Akir and Zhu-Rong as well as leaving large damp patches in her outfit. Despite that her fearsome white and red war-paint was undisturbed.

"That was so cool." Nehal observed.

"Thanks, I try." Mari answered, straightening her bandolier. "How are we supposed to get through these spirit vines?" She said between deep breaths as she inspected the massive growths. "People have tried to cut these down all over the place and never gotten anywhere."

Akir drew his sword with one smooth motion. It was a glossy black blade of meteoric star-metal. He breathed deeply, gathering his energy and then ran his hand along the edge of the blade. As his hand passed over it the sword went from being slightly blunt to a blade sharpened to a few atom's width at the edge. A series of quick slashes cut away the root like growths.

"Quickly, before they grow back." Akir commanded. As soon as Mari ducked through then the opening the growths surged outwards, stronger and heartier than before.

"Zhu-Rong, take point." Akir commanded.

"Why." He said, filling his hand with a ball of fire to light the overgrown tunnel.

"Because your firebending provides a light and it's our best offensive weapon." Akir explained. "And if something attacks you it won't get me." He added with a surprising lack of tact.

"I should have kept that paycheck." Zhu-Rong groaned.

The vines were being held back by crude bits of metal, wood and stone as well as pieces of the demolished building that just happened to be in the right place. Even then it was obvious that all these tunnels were doing was guiding these vines rather than holding them back. Perhaps by design there were massive overhangs of vines blocking the path. Akir cut through them but every time they did they grew back thicker and sturdier.

Eventually they reached the entrance to a subway tunnel enveloped by thick curling creepers. A set of muddy footprints were ahead of them.

"Are you sure you want to go in there, they could be Touched, or bandits or something." Nehal asked as she peered into the dark, dingy little tunnel. "I've never heard of people surviving in the Spirit Wilds without doing something majorly awful."

"Or they might just be scavengers like us; I know this is dangerous but we all knew this was going to be risky, going into it." Akir said, drawing his sword.

They slowly crept into the subway as quietly as they could manage. In an absence of conversation all they could here was the sound of footsteps and the slight creaking of the brickwork.

The tunnel behind them was sealed off by a wall of rock. Before any of them could react an improvised gas grenade shattered in front of them. Before Nehal could blow it away Akir and Zhu-Rong had been taken out. Zhu-Rong's flame burnt out as he collapsed on the ground. A man in tattered and dirty rags came running out of the shadow towards her whilst another dressed in layers of leather and canvas attacked Mari with a shock-glove. She released a swinging scythe of air that her assailant managed to block with a quick shield of earth. He got close, under her reach. She swung with a left hook for a quick bout of air-boxing which the man again dodged. A quick series of blows along her arm and chest, culminating with a swift knock to the forehead left her unconscious as well.

The same strikes against Mari's armoured plates were much less effective, though the blows along her left arm had crippled it. She kicked him in the knee, hard enough to fracture it and disengaged to draw her fan. She landed a slash across his chest and smashed the gloved assailant over the head with her opposite hand. She was prepared to fight onwards before a burst of water solidified into ice around her feet, rooting her to the ground. Mari squirmed and struggled, slashing wildly she clipped the gloved man across the arm before he delivered the final blow. Every nerve in her body burnt and she screamed in agony before passing out under the crackling blue sting of the glove.

"Told ya someone was followin' me, Meral." The waterbender from before said as he bent the water back into his tanks.

"Let's get them to base." The gloved one, Meral said as she pulled back her hood and caught her breath. "The Blue-Spirit will want to see them."


	6. Chapter 6: Middle Kingdom Come

Comet walked onto the bridge carrying two bowls of soup on a tarnished silver tray looted from the Fire-Nation's illustrious Lung-Gao estate judging by the eel-hound rampant embossed onto the top of it.

"So, how's the flight." Comet said, taking up the chair next to her.

"We caught a good breeze over the Serpent's Pass; if we keep up as we are we should be in radio range of Ba Sing Se before we run out of fuel." She answered, almost optimistically. "So what's for dinner." She added, trying to force a smile as she caught the odour of the thick brown slurry.

"Meat soup." Comet answered.

"What kind of meat." Asami answered as she stirred the thick soup with a slightly chipped pearl caviar spoon.

"The can just said meat." Comet answered as she took her first sip.

Asami was somewhat reassured by the way Comet gulped hers down quickly. With one last look of trepidation she took a spoonful. Immediately she blanched and screwed up her face as she forced the slightly slimy, far too chewy meat suspended in a thick sickly sweet broth down. Immediately she remembered that Comet grew up in the Commons, as much as Mari might have taken care of her she probably didn't eat that well.

"Sorry about the taste, I tried to season it a bit but they weren't exactly running a five-dragon restaurant in the galley….and Aunty Mari usually cooked for us." Comet answered a tad embarrassed.

"Well that's okay; I suppose I couldn't cook anything better." Asami answered as she braved a second spoonful.

"Yeah, well I couldn't fly an airship, or punch out a master earthbender, or run an international corporation."

"Yes well I-" Asami went to speak when the radio crackled into life. The S.O.S ping that they had been emitting had, apparently caught someone's attention.

"This is the _Middle Kingdom_, Earth Kingdom Air Force." A gravelly voice declared over the radio. It was hazy and weak, according to one of the dials they were calling from the edge of their comns range. "We've received your auto-distress, _Jadeheart_, how may we be of assistance." He said, his voice crackling over the frankly low quality speakers.

"Yes! This is Asami Sato" She shouted into the speaker, as calm a face as she had presented to Comet she had been facing the very real prospect of having to put down in the spirit-wilds. "Our airship is critically low on fuel and lifting gas, we need someone to tow us to a safe harbour." She pleaded.

"Throttle down your engines and prepare to be boarded." The coms officer said before he flicked the radio off.

An hour later the massive flying dreadnought that was the Middle Kingdom showed up. Larger than the Future Industries Flagship by a wide margin and bristling with weapons emplacements sprouting from all sides of its heavily armoured gondola. Massive engines, the largest of which was easily the size of The Jadeheart's gondola pushed its hulking form through the sky.

From one of the outlying platforms a weak spotlight cast its narrow gaze upon them, shining in through the shutters it lit up the control room.

"We are deploying a team now, the Captain will speak with you shortly." The coms officer said.

Bathed in the cold glow of the floodlight a few figures jumped from the airship dragging cables behind them. Rather than fall out of the sky green winged gliders flicked open. These Earth Kingdom Airbenders soared towards them and flicked upwards in formation to come to a steady landing on the airship.

The rickety gondola rocked like a boat at sea as they landed on the airship. Scrabbling over netting, balancing on the wings or clinging to the sides they scurried over the airship attaching cables to any anchor point left on the battered old airship.

Comet and Asami were nearly thrown out of their chair as winches pulled them towards the rear of the airship. Gushes of air buffeted the craft under the airship's massive directional fins.

They were looking at a complex framework of interconnected platforms, machinery and gondolas criss-crossed with walkways flanked by layers of thick battleship-quality armour. The thick winches pulled them close to the rear of the gondola, underneath the colossal armoured envelope and then secondary ropes and cables held it steady before a few crewmen extended a gantry to the side of the smaller airship.

A man wearing an Airship Corps Officer's uniform under a heavy woollen cloak to keep in the warmth pulled bought a megaphone up to his moustachioed lips and spoke. "This is Colonel Geun of her Majesty's Airship Middle Kingdom please come out immediately." He said politely but sternly.

Comet and Asami made their way out onto the catwalk between them and the airship proper. Despite the hulking mass of the airship's structure sheltering them from most of the wind the high altitude air was bitterly cold and the frigid metal was almost painful to grip as they walked slowly along the rickety catwalk. Comet looked down through the grating once. The shadowy ground below was frightfully distant and even the massive mountains of the serpent's pass looked small from this high up. After what felt like an eternity they crossed over to the sturdier deck of the main platform.

The Airbenders landed gracefully on the platform as well. They were all thin and sinewy to keep them as light and nimble as possible. They wore dull green, tight fitting flight suits with a thick jade surcoat and leather boots as well as long white scarves. They were all of them marked in a sick mockery of airbender tradition. On the back of their hands and the midle of their foreheads they were tattooed with the symbol of the earth kingdom. Most shockingly of all they each possessed an earthen shackle on one of their legs. It was small, not large enough to weigh them down but it was a symbol of their servitude and the leash by which any Earthbender could drag them to the ground.

A single Dai Li agent stood near them in the shadows, apparently unfazed by the cold and high altitude wind he just stood there watching.

"Thank you for taking us on Colonel!" Asami shouted over the roar of the Middle Kingdom's engines.

"Of course it's not every day we have the illustrious Miss Sato aboard." Geung said almost ominously. He said something to himself but it was hard enough to hear someone shouting much less muttering in the almighty clatter of the massive airship's engines.

In the gondola proper they were greeted with the frantic effort it took to keep a flying fortress like the _Middle Kingdom_ flying these days. They were two months into their three month patrol and the loose edges were starting to show. Discipline was still excellent, the men and women of the airship went about their buissiness with great efficiency. However they each carried themselves with a worn out air, forcing themselves to stay upright as much as they wanted to curl up and rest. Their eyes were dark and heavy, their faces were washed out pale and lifeless and their uniforms, though worn correctly looked faded and frayed. The corridors weren't quite wide enough for two people, forcing them to press up against the corridor whenever a crewman had to squeeze past, which was rather frequently.

They were near the middle of the primary gondola when a guard grabbed Comet by the arm and threw her into one of the rooms branching off of the corridor. It was, again an interrogation room. It seemed like she was always getting into trouble these days. What would Mari think? The entire room was made out of very thick and very sturdy platinum layered in irregular, overlapping plates welded and bolted together. There was a scratched up wooden table and a recording device in the middle of it as well as rather worn out looking chairs. The floor however was a unique effort in fear mongering. It was a single sheet of thick, tempered glass that offered a completely unobstructed view of the ground below.

A few seconds later Geung came in through the same door. He didn't bother to bring guards with him or a weapon, why would he bother with a gawky teenage runaway.

"Please, take a seat." He said, politely, though there was something in the tense, combative stance that told Comet she shouldn't dare refuse him. She sat down, as she was told. Geung pulled off his cap, giving her a better look at the old Colonel. His hair was incredibly grey, verging on white, despite that it was still thick and full and slightly curly. He had a long, almost mournful looking face with low, shallow cheeks and a crooked nose. All over his face he had a series of small, shallow scars as well as a large horizontal slash across his nose. He looked tired, and slightly grumpy as he sat down into his own chair, closest to the door of course.

"That's a nice coat." He said. "Captain Rumi has one just like it." He said with a somewhat forced smile.

"Why are you holding us, we didn't do anything." Comet answered. She rather hoped someone like Lifa was going to show up right about now.

"Really, well the_ Jadeheart_ was lost with all hands during the fall of Makapu City. You can imagine why we might be suspicious if someone, like say a close associate of the United Republic government and a young woman whose effects include a great deal of United Republic money happened to show up in it." He said quickly, he tapped on the wood of the desk constantly at about the pace of a resting heartbeat.

"That's it you're arresting us on suspicion of…..something." Comet said, half mocking half confused. She had heard of the 'heavy handed' attitude a lot of Ba Sing Se authorities had in this day and age. People disappeared at the slightest suspicion of the slightest crime.

"According to our Airbender regiment they found the cargo hold had countless bloodstains and torture implements in it. Squad-Leader Hong's a veteran of twelve tours and even he found it unnerving." He said, raising his voice slightly and taking on a more accusatory tone.

"Ok let me explain!" Comet squealed. For all the calm she had tried to maintain she was rapidly growing afraid as the airship made its way back to the Earth kingdom.

"Please do." He quipped. Still tapping.

"Okay, this is going to be hard to believe but you have to believe me." Comet said with a mighty gulp. "Asami, Miss Sato, we were taking her airship to the Eastern Air temple when it was attacked and we crash landed in the Great Divide. The people who crashed it landed the Jadehart nearby to capture survivors." The colour faded out of Comet's face and the words stuck in her throat as she tried to carry on.

"And then what." Geung had stopped his infernal tapping.

"I slipped my restraints. I was about to try and help Asami when Romu came in." She said. She could no longer look Geung in the eyes. "He was a bloodbender, he took me onto that tarp. He was going to kill me." Comet said shivering.

"Go on." Geung's voice was softer but he insisted on getting this recorded as he turned up the recorder's sensitivity.

"I caught him by surprise. I-I…..I killed him." She whispered finally.

"That's a...harrowing story." Geung said, ejecting the recording device's tape. "I will confer with Major Zhun, if her interview with Asami Sato reveals the same information we'll confer with Central Command." He said. He pulled the bulkhead open and headed out.

Geung walked onto the command deck. The bottom level was filled with workstations and navigation devices. The upper level was a simple platform containing a single, ostentatious seat for the captain.

"Captain How." Geung said with a quick salute. The captain reciprocated. He was younger than Geung, as well as taller and more muscular. His slate grey hair was done up in a long quiff, his captain's hat hung from the arm of his Command chair. He had large green eyes and chiselled features. He was good looking, came from a respected military family and he presented the very image of a swaggering, handsome sky-captain bravely fighting for the Earth Kingdom. His actual captaining was rather hands off however.

Besides him was Major Zhun, the quartermaster. She was the lowest ranked officer of three and the youngest. That wasn't to say she hadn't gone through the proverbial meat grinder just like them. One half of her face was a well-aged forty year old woman with high cheekbones and dull hazel eyes. The other half was that of an azure blue viper with one large yellow eye. She hid as much of it as she could under a dull black wig and her peaked cap. She wore a yellow scarf and thick leather gloves to help cover as much of her 'affliction' as she could.

"Major Zhun was just telling me about Sato's interview." How said, slouching further into his chair.

"The Sato girl was….stubborn." She said, rubbing her jaw tenderly. When she spoke she dragged and slurred the letter 's' despite, or perhaps because of it she maintained a clipped, precise tone and a dour demeanour that projected far more professionalism than a slight speech impediment could tarnish. "She claims their ship went down in the Great Divide, apparently Unalaq's cult was behind it, they claim they managed to kill a bloodbender and used the Jadeheart to escape."

"Comet said the same thing, perhaps they're telling the truth." Geung observed.

"Perhaps, or they simply got their alibi together." Captain how said, reaching for his pipe. Even a man of his standing wasn't meant to smoke on the bridge but chewing the nub of it helped him think.

"I still can't understand why the United Republic would send one of their most famous citizens to capture a dinky old air-skiff with the help of a teenage orphan." Geung observed.

"These orders came directly from her Majesty the Queen." Zhun said, pointing to the sepia photo of the grim faced monarch, bolted to the wall by the main hatch onto the bridge.

"Quite right, ours is not to question, just to serve." How answered slowly, quite impressed with the piece of tired wisdom his father had said some thirty years previously and he expected his officers to be just as impressed. "We were told to bring them back to the Palace, so bring them back we shall."

Geung huffed for a moment. After so many years in service to his 'beloved' Earth Queen he was rather less devoted to her frankly questionable edicts. "Fine. I don't like it, but fine."

Comet was marched down to their 'prison' an unused bunkroom with a lock on the door. It wasn't exactly secure but then why would it be, there was nowhere to escape to, miles in the air and surrounded by some of the most highly trained soldiers of the Earth Kingdom. It was also not especially comfortable. Unlike the Jadeheart's quarters which were much too cold this room at least was much too warm, due to a hot water pipe running through it from the ceiling. Its oppressive heat filled the stodgy, stifling room with an intrusively dry heat. A small electric fan in the middle of the room had succeeded only in blowing hot air into their faces.

After an hour's worth of moaning Comet had persuaded a guard into giving her a ledger and pen. She had intended to write a sterling memoir of her adventure so far and was instead drawing a doodle of herself dressed as a warrior riding a sky bison. Asami had slept most of the day, she had been up for sixteen hours trying to keep the _Jadeheart_ on course before they were picked up. It reminded Comet of her and Mari's room in the Commons. She was just a toddler when Mari first bought her there, from her first memory to her brief visit to the Galleries she had lived in that cramped stuffy room her entire life. And now she was right back to living in a hot airless room.

As they neared Ba Sing Se Comet looked out of the window to see Ba Sing Se in all its faded, shadowy glory. As they descended it became clear that the city was still inhabited, unlike some of the ghost towns she had looked down on in the long series of disastrous flights that was her little adventure. It was true that much of the city had been reduced to ruin by attacking spirits though, the verdant farmland and metropolitan forests of the outer ring were now dead and barren patches of soil. As they flew over the city they could see whole blocks of housing stripped to the foundations. Despite that stalwart citizens went about their day, guided by dim crystal lanterns and descended into basements and catacombs. The factory districts, what remained of them anyway, were still belching smoke and ash up into the sky. It came back down on the rainswept city in clomps of cloying black and dirty rain.

Asami had woken up to the thud of the Airship coming into land. Geung came to retrieve them when they landed. He handed Comet back her old captain's coat.

Colonel Jeung opened the door. Comet and Asami were happy to see him just because with the door open the much colder air of the corridor beyond could mingle in, crisp and fresh it felt like life was wafting back into their lungs after lounging in their sweaty repose. "I managed to persuade the Captain into letting you walk out there without handcuffs but you have to promise me you won't pull anything, for your sake and mine." He took a deep breath, his tan face pulled into a fearful frown. "If the Dai Li suspect any of us of being a threat to the Earth Queen, we will be killed on the spot, you understand me."

"We understand." Asami said narrowing her eyes. Comet just nodded. She had never seen someone more important than Jeung in all her life and now she was about to stand before one of the last two Monarchs in the world, and technically her liege. And from the sound of things she was also a suspected thief. According to her time in the Air Temple library that gave the queen the right to execute her if she deemed fit.

They were marched out into the grounds surrounding the royal palace. It was surreal, in the dark and sparsely lit grounds she could still make out the massive golden roofed palace, glinting in what little light there was to be found from under an enormous black tarp to keep the spirits from descending on it. Aside from that there were little changes to the fortified, windowless superstructure. All around them were ships as big as the _Middle Kingdom _as far as they could see, though in the dim twilight of the late afternoon that wasn't very much.

The ground crew welcomed them, quickly going about their business to properly secure the _Middle Kingdom_ and begin the long process of reequipping and maintaining the airship for another patrol. The aircrew were pleased to get home a few weeks earlier and returned to their friends in the maintenance groups with wide smiles and hearty laughter.

Stood silently on the side-lines, however was the Dai Li. There was a bubble of quietude around them, airmen would cut a wide berth around them and never dared to speak too loudly when they drew near. The Airbenders walked over to them obediently. Returning to the hard ground bought them no relief they just exchanged the gilded cage of a premiere airship for the actual cage that awaited them.

A separate group of Dai Li agents escorted a short and stick-thin man in a long, dark green tang suit. The way he walked, with a sense of purpose and presence declared him as a man of wealth and power. He stopped less than an arm's length away from the prisoners. In the dark his reflective glasses shone like headlights. He was an odd looking man, his tan skin was completely smooth without a single scar or wrinkle, stretched almost too tight on his skull like face with high cheekbones, small sunken eyes and a thin upturned nose and lips so thin they almost disappeared when he spoke. He smelt of fine perfume and hair conditioner.

"I am Shan, Grand Secretariat of Ba Sing Se." He said quickly in a high, reedy voice. "Under the advice of Inquisitor-General Jinywei I am here to escort you before her Majesty Hu Ting the Earth Queen, 53rd Ruler of the Earth Kingdom." He added.

"Are you ever going to tell us exactly what we're being charged with." Asami said.

"You are talking to the most powerful man in the Kingdom, show some respect." Jinywei snapped. He was a rather powerfully built man, his broad shoulders and thickly muscled torso defined the shape of his uniform robes. Aside from a simple green sash across his chest he was dressed exactly like all of the other Dai Li. Vivid, hateful green eyes peeked out from beneath a shadowy, cone shaped hat. He possessed a close cut black beard, full and thick with a natural sheen. Aside from that he was a largely forgettable face from what she could make out of him in the dark.

Aside from the golden roofs of the palace proper the palace grounds were almost completely shrouded in darkness. As they almost blindly crossed the vast expanse of the royal Airfleet's landing space they could barely see more than ten metres in front of them, the many steps and trellises presented their own hidden dangers. Twice Comet smashed her face into the ground. Asami waved her cane ahead of her like a blind person to try and keep herself upright. The Secretariat and the General both navigated the shadowy maze by memory. As Comet recalled from an old photograph of the palace the main walk up to the central building had always been a straight unobstructed walk to the great green arches.

The doors of the grand hall opened to them, and then shut as soon as Asami managed to limp in. As they walked through the cavernous hallway countless Dai Li agents stood like terracotta soldiers watching them pass. As they journeyed deeper into the corridor the lamps grew brighter and brighter until they were in the royal court itself. Couched on a throne under the stony gaze of a badger-mole statue was Hou-Ting herself. She was a dour woman in bright, silken robes of green and yellow with a golden necklace and claw like nail guards. Comet always imagined a woman like the Earth Queen would look more regal, more serene, like an older Asami. Instead the Queen more accurately resembled someone's least favourite grandmother. She was long faced and gaunt with a wide, scowling mouth decorated with over-bright lipstick and despite her advancing years and deep wrinkles she completely lacked laughter lines.

Two of the agents Jinywei had bought with him barred Asami and Comet as their leader and Secretariat Shan ascended to stand alongside their queen.

"Miss Sato, you are looking radiant….for an imprisoned airship thief." The Queen proclaimed in a voice dripping with supremacy. Hers was an ancient line that had governed the colossal Earth-Kingdom for as long as there had been an Earth Kingdom. Perched at the end of all that history this merchant princess, daughter of an imprisoned lunatic was hardly worth considering. Less so her accomplice, a nobody commoner from those insular breakaways on Kyoshi Island.

"Before we begin it is your right to know what you have been accused of." She declared. "You are formally charged with the theft of a Military Airship, piracy attempted espionage, murder and defacement of government property." Her voice took on an ominous almost villainous tone. "If found guilty of any of these crimes you will be sentenced to death"


	7. Chapter 7: The Underground

Akir woke up with a splitting headache in a rather unpleasant looking cell. It was a small wooden box, like a shed assembled deep underground. He was stripped to his underwear and shackled at the hips and ankles with rough, tightly coiled length of nautical rope between the the tough leather grips around his wrists and another pair holding his ankles together, both held together by a thick leather belt theat dug into his waist and forced him into a low slouching position as he sat on the cold hardwood floor. He fumbled, feeling around the left side of his face. They had taken his eyepatch, exposing the smooth skin where an eye should have been. He quickly pulled his long black hair over that side of his face in a desperate attempt to keep himself covered.

He scooted around to see the rest of the group. Mari was still unconscious, curled up like a giant muscular baby fast asleep. Zhu-Rong was snoring through a thick fire proof mask. Gasping Nehal shot up and yelped as her restraints bit into her. The first thing she did was feel her forehead. Her hand collided with her skin her face grew more and more terrified.

Akir noticed two burn marks on the backs of her hands. They weren't like some sort of accidental wound or the result of a fight with a firebender but near-exactly circular patches of crumpled flesh sunken deep into her hands.

She looked over to Akir. Her hair was presently a loose mop of dishevelled brown 'bed hair' but underneath it was another scar a deep withering burn. Her brow shifted upwards in surprise, aside from the burned patch which had scarred deep into the muscle.

"So, that's why you never actually put those goggles over your damn eyes." He commented dryly.

"Yes, and if you don't mind I think I'd like to keep it between you and me." She answered briskly, evidently unamused.

Mari was beginning to stir. She groaned loudly as she began to wake up. "I don't think that will be an option." Akir observed pointing to her. As she sat up dazed her makeup was smudged and skewed. She took one look at Akir and Nehal sat there in underwear and chains and sighed deeply.

"Oh not again." She muttered under her breath. "Please tell me this isn't what it looks like."

"Um…..no?" Akir managed. "I assume we have been captured." He said a second later having regained his calm.

"That's what it looks like." Nehal observed. "Perhaps we shouldn't have followed the mysterious stranger into unknown territory." Nehal observed dryly as she turned her withering gaze to Akir.

"Hmm." Zhu-Rong sighed, the proverbial gears in his head turning as he looked around his prison. "Are those burn marks." He said, gesturing to Nehal.

"Thanks for pointing that out." She said grimly. "If you must know I used to be a part of the Royal Airbending Regiment." She added proudly, though the small smile she managed soon faded. "When my family started ferrying survivors to Ba Sing Se I was discovered as an Airbender. My life happened, then I ended up hired for a ridiculously dangerous expedition and now I'm here." She said trying to maintain a cool, casual demeanour.

Mari prodded Zhu-Rong in the flank with her foot. "Don't you think you should apologise for bringing it up."

"I am sorry to bring that up." He answered. His voice was as empty of emotion as ever beside a small measure of confusion as he said the words.

Before he could stammer any further through an attempt at a heartfelt apology the door swung open. Stood in the doorway was an as of yet unknown survivor. He was garbed in a mix of recovered United Forces gear and a crumpled patchwork collection of brightly coloured clothes and rags that were faded, dirty and stained. At his waist he carried a flute of all things. His black hair was long and wild, growing out as much as it grew down and held out of his face by a red headband. He looked to be about middle aged with deep care worn lines all over his pallid grubby face. Bloodshot yellow eyes surveyed them keenly though from the yawn he stifled it was clear he was struggling to stay awake even on his feet. Akir looked past him. They were in one of the cavernous underground hollows beneath the city. The homeless lived down here in the City's heyday. It would seem some of them still were.

"Which one of you is the leader." He asked, his voice had the scratchiness of a habitual smoker and sure enough he possessed a small pack held to his head by his headband.

"I am I suppose." Akir said, trying to sound heroic though the obvious fear in his one remaining eye made it clear he was terrified.

He tied a blindfold over Akir's face and then dragged Akir out by the ropes of his restraints. He could feel the cold hard crags of an old stone floor. He could hear hushed conversation all around him and the crackling sound of several fires all around him as well as the metronome drip of water leaking from somewhere. He could hear better things as well. Marbles rolling across the floor, the pitter patter of small feet running and the laughter of children. Looking up he saw a settlement built in what had once been one of the subway servicing facilities. Workshops that once teemed with heavy engineering were now kitchens and sewing stations and whatever else they needed to be. Rows and rows of salvaged hospital beds separated by tattered curtains and blankets served as quarters of the small settlements. Children who had known no other life scampered up and down the cavernous maintenance bay. There were men and women of all shapes and sizes some were Touched, some were amputees others were too old or too young and a few were mentally ill, sitting silently in tarnished white straightjackets.

More threateningly was the militia that guarded them. Former equalists stood shoulder to shoulder with benders of all types including a few Triads in faded silk suits. They wore a mix of salvaged united forces gear, pro-bending equipment and even a few tarnished sets of Metal Bending Police uniforms as well as tattered civilian clothing recovered from all over the city. They formed a heavily armed barrier between Akir and their wards as if he were a dangerous beast.

At the end of the chamber he was presented with the old floor manager's office. A rough hand pushed him through the bulkhead.

In the very first second of sight he took in his surroundings. The walls and floor were booth featureless grey cement marred by thick, occasionally leaking pipes. Opposite him was a 'desk' made of stacked milk cartons and a large wooden plank. On that desk was a glowstone lamp and numerous stacks of crumpled old paper as well as small chalkboards stacked a foot high. A few books and scrolls sat in small tubs all around the perimeter of the room under thick waterproof tarps. Sat on an assembled metal bookshelf was a variety of what looked to be children's arts and crafts projects. Sloppily moulded clay and popsicle stick figures as well as crudely painted ceramic plates sat about on display, almost proudly.

There was his opening. One sharp tug with his bending and he could yank any earthenware art out and straight into someone's face. The clay projects were dry and flaky if he shattered it he could make a fine dust to cover his escape.

He felt a point prod him in the side of the head. He turned, slowly. A woman with a horribly scarred mouth covered by a dust mask beneath a dull grey bandana levelled a harpoon gun at the side of his head. Covered in an equalist bodysuit she was as skinny as the weapon she wielded and the oversized harpoon launcher was nearly as tall as her. Dazzlingly bright blue eyes buried under a brow furrowed in chronic pain watched him intently. She wore a small chalkboard around her neck, half hidden by a dull green poncho and her combat gear, laden down with a truly frightening amount of explosives. She breathed with a constant wheezing rasp.

Stood behind her was a figure dressed all in dirty old black fatigues. He wore a blue mask, presently pushed up above his face almost casually. He was youngish, perhaps thirty five but he looked tired and care worn with deep worry lines on his forehead and bloodshot grey eyes set in a darkly tanned, grimacing face. His black, tousled hair was streaked with untimely strands of grey around the temples and he wore a small soulpatch as well as thick stubble. He wore dual dao swords paired together in a single sheath across his back. His equipment was well made but unadorned, without the traditional flourishes of a sentimental piece instead his gear had the precise, ascetic quality of military grade factory fodder. He carried himself with a tired, almost slouching posture, he moved slowly but deliberately like he was struggling to force himself to move even the slightest bit.

"I wouldn't bother moving, Lotus, whatever you're planning it isn't going to be quicker than my girl Yana, here's trigger finger." He said with soft, deep voice best suited for a radio though there was a gravelly undercurrent of exhaustion buried deep within it as well. He crossed the room and sat at his ramshackle desk opposite Akir.

"So I take it you're the authority around here." Akir said disparagingly. "I love your office by the way."

"Captain Nagant of the Blue Spirits Special Operations Unit." He replied with a note of pride, apparently ignoring the slight. "Who are you?"

"I am Science Commander Master Lotus, Doctor Akir, Graduate of the Piandao institute, Head Researcher of the Western Air Temple, Scientific Advisor to General Iroh and the Last Swordsman of the Si Wong Desert." He answered, his chest swelling with pride.

"Good luck fitting all of that on a card." Nagant answered sharply. "Why are you here?" He answered in a deadly serious tone as he leaned forwards across his table. In the harsh and meagre light of the glowstones he was an ominous figure staring at him like a Tigerdillo ready to pounce.

"Why are you?" Akir said looking around the dank little office.

"Why are we here?" He asked rhetorically. "Because when this city fell people like you turned and ran and left behind the poor, the needy, the ill, just people who didn't have the money and connections to get aboard an airship." He answered incensed. It was clear that he had spent a great deal of time thinking of just what he'd say if he ever got the chance to tell off one of the people that in his mind left them behind. "Women, children, wounded, you just left them at the docks and never looked back. My squad and I were there for the City's last stand, we fought them street to street, block to block up there just so people like you could abandon us."

"You've seen those monsters up there, if we sent any meaningful form of relief we'd lose more lives than we'd save." He answered.

Nagant's eyes narrowed for a moment. "But you at least, have a ride out of here?"

"I'm on an expedition, my team and I are looking for information that may shift the course of the war in our favour." Akir said seriously. "I'm not leaving until I complete my mission."

"Well great, good for you. I'm going to ask you again, do you have a ride out of here?" Nagant answered instantly, it was obvious he didn't care about any mission. There was a desperate look in his eyes said that he didn't really care about the spirits or the war anymore he just wanted out.

"Well the submarine we took into the city's probably long gone." The look on Nagant's face grew to angered disappointment. Akir scrambled for a reason to keep his team alive and finally stumbled upon one. "We were going to the Republic City University, it had a radio-sciences lab, if I can get it up and running I can have someone send in our airship. She's not big but I think she can get your people to Air Temple Island, from there you can call in for a proper lift to safety." He said far too quickly. It was obvious that beneath a grand tittle an air of superiority Akir feared for his life.

Nagant responded quickly, too quickly to have been thinking he must have anticipated it. Akir surmised that he had read through the notebook in his coat and all this was just a little game, perhaps to get as much information out of him as they could, perhaps to intimidate him, perhaps it was just for their amusement to make one of the upper crust squirm. "I think we can come to an understanding." He said with a big wide, entirely fake smile.

Nehal pulled and strained at her chains until she had pressed harsh bruises into her wrists and ankles.

"Nehal, you'll break our arm before you break those chains." Mari said dejectedly.

Nehal grit her teeth and tried to push through the pain. Small tears welled up in the corners of her eyes and her face burnt red with anger. "No." she yelled, far more furious than she had intended. "I've come too far, done too much for it to end in chains." She seethed, almost feral.

Zhu-Rong was breathing deeply in the corner of the cell. He was smouldering, literally smouldering. He was red faced and sweaty despite the cold and damp that surrounded them. The smell of burning leather gathered around him. He took one last deep breath, fire puffing out of the breath holes of his face mask before the leather restraints around his wrists finally burnt enough for him to pull the crumpled wreck off of his arms. He had deep blisters burnt onto his wrists, any other man would have screamed in pain and given up long before burning that mark into themselves or cooking their restraints off, how Zhu-Rong managed to endure it and maintain the fine breath control it took to see it to fruition was another mystery of the stranger from a distant land.

As he pulled away his mask he looked at his fellow captives with his stony emotionless face and spoke as evenly as ever. "It certainly will not end in chains."

A fire blade from his fingertips made short work of his ankle bindings. Within a few minutes Nehal and Mari were free from their bindings.

"That was pretty good work." Nehal said as she rubbed her tender wrists.

"You started a bit of a fire though." Mari mentioned as she hefted herself off the ground.

"Not going to be a problem much longer." Nehal answered with a vicious smile. She took as deep a breath as she could manage, one so massive that Mari could feel the wind in her hair as she pulled in as much air as she could. In a deep roaring blast, joined by gusts from her hands she blasted the left wall out of the shed in a hail of splinters. The man with the flute from before was knocked off his and into unconsciousness by the storm of shrapnel.

The entire chamber went up in screams from the young and the old as the shed split apart.

The trio leapt out ready for a fight, Zhu-Rong's fist were wreathed in flame, Mari held onto her chains as a crude whip and Nehal projected blades of air from her clenched fists. The chamber erupted into bedlam. Men women and children ran in fear, those that were able. As the torrent of frightened civilians whirled around them stony faced soldiers advanced amidst the chaos. When the last of them had gotten behind the soldiers they presented their weapons. It was a rag tag collection of weaponry ranging from the humble club to electric kali-sticks to menacing water whips.

Akir was being escorted back to the shed when its left face exploded outwards, complicating the matter slightly. Akir felt cold hard steel poking into the nape of the neck a heartbeat later.

"Lotus." Nagant yelled demandingly. "If this was some sort of ploy..." He took Akir's upper arm in a vice like grip and yanked him to the assembled firing line.

"We don't really think that far ahead." Akir answered quickly as he felt the cold point of Yana's harpoon still at the nape of his neck, pressing down just hard enough to break the skin. The scavenger that led them into all this was there baring liquid whips.

"Mercenaries!" Nagant yelled, hard enough to echo off the ceiling some sixty foot above them. He parted his men and walked past their line until he was just a half dozen paces away from Mari who stood at the forefront. She towered over Nagant, she sized him and his swords up carefully. With her arsenal she was confident he wouldn't even have made it this far. With her bare hands she was less confident. If Nagant realised how many ways Mari was thinking of to kill him horribly he didn't seem to mind.

"If you think hostages are going to get anywhere you're dead wrong." Nehal seethed, eying the chi-blocker from the tunnels acidly.

"Thanks." Akir retorted glibly. "The guy in the mask and I agreed to work with us in exchange for evacuating them to Air Temple Island."

"As if these guys can get us out of here." The bearded water bender huffed.

"We escaped your shed." Zhu-Rong observed, if one was to listen closely they might have heard a slightly mocking edge buried in his slow even timbre.

"You haven't gotten away yet." The waterbender growled.

"Stand down." Nagant ordered calmly. "I'm sorry….angry firebender….but we don't usually negotiate with our enemies, on account of them being horrors from another plane of existence." He said sauntering closer. "If you stand down and agree to help us I give you my word you won't be harmed. Isn't that right Narada"

The waterbender huffed and pulled his waterwhips back into the tanks on his back.

"Now then, if you would like to collect your things and prepare to move out, I'd really rather not keep you around for too long." Nagant said calmly. "Narada, take them to our clearing room, and give them their gear. The Lotus is in command of his people, you and Yana make sure they follow through on their end of the bargain."

"Yes, Captain." Narada answered. Yana finally lowered her weapon from the back of Akir's neck and nodded curtly. She slung the weapon over her sharp shoulders and walked straight between Mari and Zhu-Rong as if they weren't even there with a precise confident strut. She pulled a key from her belt and opened up the bulkhead behind them.

Inside was a locker room, at one time it would have been the domain of weary shift workers peeling themselves out of dirty coveralls. Now it was their armoury. Stacks of weapons glinted menacingly in the dim, flickering glow of a single bare light bulb on the ceiling. Aside from old faded posters the room was ascetic and functional with tarnished white tiles on the walls and ceilings. In the middle of the room were low flat, rusted metal benches. In a few large trunks with scratched up red paint sat the team's gear. Yana opened the trunks one at a time and pointed them to their gear.

Akir pulled on his vestments, crumpled and creased now from being stuffed haphazardly into the crate, the same as his leather coat. He quickly pulled on his gear and strapped his sword to his waist.

"Don't know why you're so precious about that thing." Narada said, gesturing to Akir's sword. "It's blunt as a post."

"It's specially forged star metal, high earth content, I can metalbend it sharper, longer, curved or hooked as I need." Akir explained proudly.

"Mine' still bigger." Mari said jealously as she hefted her armour on. It was true, Mari's sword was about the size of a small child from tip to pommel.

Yana just made something resembling a huff. The hatch pressed open to reveal a little boy, at most seven. He wandered in apparently unfazed by the strangers in her home. He approached Yana and signed a quick succession of gestures towards the older mute. Yana Knelt down and hunched over until she was almost eye level with the little boy. He pulled a small metal hairclip from a pocket somewhere in his oversized clothes and put it in Yana's long reddish brown hair, pulling it back to one side. Yana made some signs back to her and tousled the young boy's hair before he toddled off.

"Clown Lady." He said drawing Mari's attention. "Yana says her harpoon's better." He added before he headed back into the main chamber. His voice was uneven and slurred, fluctuating senselessly between a near whisper and half shouting.

_What was that about_ Akir signed clumsily and slowly whilst they waited for Mari to pull on her full arsenal.

_You can sign?_ She asked, there was a small dry gasp and a wide, surprised look to her eyes. Akir just nodded. _That's Lang, He lost his hearing to a disease a few years ago_. There was a pause as she thought for a moment. _He talks for me, I listen for him_.

"Come on, it's a long way to the University." Narada said before they made for the exit. After they made their way through a series of narrow, half collapsed service corridors in what had been the sprawling expanse of the Republic City Underground. Yana had to stay ahead to guide them past restrained logs, pits of punji sticks and other such traps to keep out any bandits that might skulk around the area.

"Lucky we didn't try to follow you this way." Akir said nervously. Yana nodded. "Are raiders this big of a problem?" He asked.

"When we first set up shop we were fighting off raiders all the time. Then it was cultists but now we only get them in dribs and drabs." Narada explained. "Don't know if spirits got them, or they went somewhere else."

"How did you end up here, were you part of Nagant's squad or something." Mari asked from the back of the party.

"The Captain doesn't usually talk about it but I think he lost his old unit in the fighting." Narada explained. "I used to run with the Red Monsoons and Yana was actually working on a whaling ship if you can believe it." Yana again nodded. "My gang and I were looting when cultists started picking them off. I escaped into the underground and one of the scavengers found me."

_What about you?_ Akir asked he was hard to make out in the flickering light of Zhu-Rong's flame. _How did you get here?_

_The crew I was working with tried to sail out of the bay when spirits attacked us. The current carried me back into the city and I washed up nearby_ She answered.

"So how did your little town get started?" Nehal asked. She was in the middle, standing wearily in the claustrophobic tunnels.

"The homeless have always lived in the catacombs and former equalists used their network of spider holes to stay hidden after Amon was defeated." Narada explained. "A lot of people took to the idea, most found us trying to escape through the harbour or across to one of the suburbs." He explained.

"I imagine that must have been difficult, old enemies forced to work together." Akir asked.

"It was." Narada said as they trundled down an abandoned track. One old subway car sat on the left side crumpled and half buried by a partial collapse of the roof. "Homeless hated the triads, triads hated the police and the equalists hated all of them. But Nagant was able to keep us in line, get us working together, after this long it doesn't matter anymore." He added proudly. "What about you? How did you guys come together?"

"Akir payed us to help him." Zhu-Rong explained simply.

"Yeah that's about it." Akir said with an apathetic shrug. The tracks branched off to the side, next to it was a small maintenance cart.

"The battery's blown do you think you can get us going?" Narada asked as he hopped into it. Akir clambered into the 'driver' section of it with a bit of apprehension.

"I don't usually bend anything this big." He explained. "But I can give it a try." He took a mighty gulp. He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the earth and metal around him. With a grunt of effort they set off at slightly above running pace.

After about ten minutes effort Akir was tiring and they were still nowhere near the university or the end of the track.

Zhu-Rong stood up, faced the rear of the train and released a jet of bright burning flame that rocketed them forwards. The cart shook and rocked as they sped over rusted tracks at a speed the vehicle was simply not designed for. They were going down a more or less straight expanse of tunnel at around seventy kilometres per hour before they were forced to a sudden halt.

Akir spotted the end of the track in the distance, or rather he spotted the end of the entire tunnel. The whole underground had collapsed into a sinkhole overgrown with vines, moss and trees that glinted slightly in the darkness. He forced the cart's breaks on before he could think such an idea through. He and Zhu-Rong were thrown out of the cart and landed sprawled a few feet ahead of it, nearly rolling off the edge of the tunnel. Akir pulled himself to standing on the uneven, rain-slicked ground and looked over the sinkhole and helped Zhu-Rong up after him. It was a colossal gyre, as large as the probending arena. Crumbling, tilted buildings sat half intact at the bottom like sticks thrown down a hole. Over the years rainwater had seeped in until it was a new lake in the middle. Akir strained to see in the weak moonlight, half hidden behind a canopy of spirit vines. The plain white walls of the University sat in the distance. It was uneven and sloped precariously over the edge of the pit. The outer buildings had already tumbled away like the office buildings towards the entrance but the campus was still somewhat intact aside from the wealth of vines growing over its faded glory.

They could see a few lesser spirits crawling around the walls of the pit and up the sides of the university like ants over day old fruit.

"Well, I guess going back to school won't be that easy." Narada quipped. Everyone, including Yana with some effort just sighed.


	8. Chapter 8: The Lotus Blooms Red

Narada looked over the edge at the murky pool of water easily enough to berth a dozen Battleship and deep enough that you couldn't see the bottom.

Yana waved her hands furiously and pointed them to the edge of the university before peering at it through the scope of her harpoon gun. Everyone else made use of their spyglasses or binoculars to peer across the sunken district.

The spirits hissed and thrashed as a single cultist came out from the gates of the University. He was a short and nebbish young man in black and red cloth that resembled Red-Lotus Atire from a distance. He carried an Ancient bronze and copper saucer, tarnished with flecks of greenish brown rust from tens of thousands of years. Squinting in the distance Akir could make out the electrum glyphs emblazoned on its surface, he recognised it as the Bowl of Kumari Nadu.

The cultist was clearly frightened to stand amongst the creatures and with good reason. Even lesser spirits were the size of a man. Jagged predatory spirits circled him, eying his with glowing rips in their shadowy bodies. He placed the bowl on a crude altar fashioned from reclaimed metal. He drew a wavy bronze dagger, fitted with the same glyphs and slashed his hand open into the bowl.

Whatever the ritual was supposed to do it had failed. They let out a chorus of thrumming screeches that filled the cavern. Even across the gap Akir and his group could feel their eardrums trembling in a haze of white hot noise. They pounced on the cultist. The first of them leapt into his body, and then another and another. His body convelulsed and shook with more force than a mortal form was meant to handle. Bones snapped, tendons stripped from flesh and set his limbs at unnatural angles. Growths resembling the half dozen spirits in his body sprouted out haphazardly from his ever growing form. Eyes grew across his body, as did pseudopods and coral growths and insect wings and things that looked like intestines spewed from his body and coiled on the floor around him as well as body parts that had no earthly equivalent. Eventually he was a shapeless hulking mass twenty foot long and half as wide. All that was human in him was the top half of his head and on one side of his body a twisted hand still gripped the bronze dagger tightly.

A half a dozen cultists all much older ran out. They performed some form of waterbending, drawing huge tendrils up from the sinkhole. A seventh one supervised them dispassionately, she was obviously of higher status as attested by her genuine Red-Lotus robes, half covered by silk lined black cloak with the hood up, covering her face in shadow apart from one long braid of grey-white hair that reached down to her knees. What began as simple strands of water took on a golden glow encircling the twitching formerly human thing over and over again. Like fish hanging from a line the spirits were dragged out of him and lashed to the ground by glowing tendrils of ice that still glowed faintly, ebbing and flickering like a candle.

One spirit roared and burst free of its confines. With a few calm, subtle movements the seventh cultist bent a shimmering limb of liquid metal and encircled it in orbiting tendrils that congealed into one whole pool of glowing metal that stuck the spirit to the floor. She clenched a fist and dispersed the spirit as a flock of flickering embers of spirit energy that floated up and out of the chasm. She then pulled the bronze bowl into her hands and stepped back a bit into the university.

The waterbenders approached the deformed cultist, its sides still rose and fell like it was breathing and half formed limbs all over it squirmed and twitched. One, knelt down and gently took the dagger from his hands and presented it to the seventh cultist, bowed in supplication. The rest rolled the still living thing off the edge of the campus until it fell into the silty water down below.

"What the hell was that!?" Nehal hissed.

Narada paused heavily before answering. "That is what happened to anyone the spirits captured."

"What was that guy trying to do?" Mari asked as she stared at the crude altar. It had dappled specks of dried blood as if it had been used before and her mind wandered as she attempted to imagine just what was supposed to have happened.

"That bowl was unearthed in a pre-dynastic settlement on Ember Island." Akir explained, squeezing an eye shut as he tried to remember the tag notes for a catalogued piece of tat from years ago. "It was enscribed with instructions for some sort of Ancient ritual to control spirits directly."

"You're telling me you knew about a relic that could control spirits and you left it behind?" Seethed Narada. Yana and Mari also gave him a look that was halfway between confusion and annoyance.

"We found it in an eight thousand year old playhouse; we assumed it was just a prop." He shot back defensively. "Besides there was no precedent for spirits responding to a physical object like that."

"We should think about getting to the bowl instead." Zhu-Rong observed dryly.

"I can bend a wave out of the sinkhole, should be enough to throw us over there." Narada commented.

Akir eyed the waterbenders, busily calming the spirits. The woman with the dagger picked up the bowl from its altar and callously tipped the blood out onto the flecked floor. "They'll see it coming from a mile away, out in the open with a dozen waterbenders, plus whoever else is in there, we'd never make the crossing." He replied.

"I don't see any other options." Zhu-Rong commented.

"No I think there's a better way." Mari objected as she pulled out a spy glass. She muttered something about angles and load bearing beams under her breath. "Akir, you don't need anything from those front two buildings, do you?" She asked, pointing to the half sunken campus.

"No, they were the Chemistry labs and the Literature block." He replied.

"Good, Yana, I assume you have an actual turtle-whaling harpoon right" Yana nodded, slotting the long wicked looking, curved head of a harpoon in.

"Okay." She pointed to the half sunken Atman Building leaning precariously towards the university with a decisive slant. The point of her finger traced down the wrecked skyscraper until it was pointing to a typing pool on the fourth floor above the water level. The wall on their side had fallen away as rubble long ago, with the tip just poking out of the rainwater lake. The plaster around the support beams had flaked away as the rusty old girders beneath them burst out like contusions. One massive oxidised beam right in the middle was just about keeping the building's massive weight from crashing down and tipping the top of the building open.

"You see that support beam on the Atman building? A good explosive there, combined with some subtle earthbending will knock it down into the lower campus, that's a weak foundation, it'll crumble and take them down into the pit." She explained rapidly in hushed whisper.

"And why is that any better than charging them head on." Narada asked.

"Because if we do that we'll go in blind, get out-flanked by any fighters further back and likely die." She responded with a dire sort of amusement in her voice. "My way we take out the visible enemies and in the confusion we can use your wave to carry us to the base of the Atman building and make our approach hidden inside the building." She explained. "The minute Yana makes the shot you have to do that wave thing though; we don't know how long we have 'til reinforcements show up."

"Well it sounds more fun than my plan I'm in." Narada answered.

Yana waited for the rest of the group to get ready, waiting at the edge of the precipice and took her aim, peering down an old telescope strapped to the top of the harpoon launcher. She took her measure of the angle of descent and the slight wind around them. She held her breath and gently squeezed the trigger. A short sharp crack sounded through the echoing chasm and second later the penetrating point of a turtle-whaling charge dug deep and true into the girder before exploding violently. The twice-ruined skyscraper groaned and shuddered as it tipped over.

With the absolute best of his earthbending Akir nudged the mighty building directly towards the campus. Mari dragged him off his feet and carried him with one arm as they and the rest of the group jumped off of the cliff.

The Cultists barely had time to gasp as the Atman building snapped and fell through the sunken outer campus like a knife carved through cooked meat. All the windows time had failed to break shattered out of it filling the plume of dust with glittering shards of glass. The cliff-face where the cultists stood was there one minute and gone the next. The congregation and the two outer most buildings of the campus were crushed flat and slowly sunk away causing the broken hulk of the building to shudder downwards a few feet.

Akir and his team could barely see what was going on as Narada swept them into the ruined base of the Atman building. They collided a bit too hard with the floor and were floundering drenched like fish amidst the miniature dunes of powderised concrete and accumulated dust that stuck to them like tar until Akir was able to bend it off of them.

"Quickly, whilst they're distracted." Mari hissed, surprisingly nonchalant about being washed out to the base of a skyscraper.

In front of them was the tipped over tower with half its floor tiles exposing the mess of ruined floors further up. Mari clambered up the sheared off elevator shaft and began clambering up the steep new corridor.

"I knew she was worth the money." Akir whispered to Nehal. It was a fairly lengthy clamber up to what remained of the top floors. Akir pulled his sword from its sheath, still blunt as a butter knife and instead used the sword as a crude transportation. The shaft rang out with the sound of scraping metal and a shower of sparks. He rocketed past Mari, who was slowly clambering up wards with the help of an elevator cable. He staggered to a stop near the top, or rather what remained of the top, in this case a bent in framework of metal girders and crumbling cement. He fell backwards through one of the open elevator doors and slammed straight through the rotted wood of the top floor foyer's doors before colliding with an upturned, rosewood coffee table. He was lucky to avoid falling through the large, empty window frames either side of him. He risked peering down. An unfortunate cultist had been crushed under a hulking refrigerator, ripped from the walls. The other cultists were looking around, joined by a few spirits. Some of the cultists carried fire, some carried waterskins and others held levitating rocks at the ready. The majority however were armed with historical weapons sharpened back to usefulness. The squashed Cultist was carrying a galive from the Ting dynasty-period.

"What was that?" A young, nervous voice said.

"It might just be loose rock." A shockingly familiar voice answered below him. "All the same, please tell Lem-Wu I suggest he take a few extra spirits." It was a, dry, clipped and educated voice that exuded confidence and authority.

Akir risked a peek down to get a look at the source of the voice, hoping to be wrong. He was not. Akir looked down to see the cultist pull back her hood revealing the well weathered face of a woman in her early fifties. Aside from a few light wrinkles on her sallow skin the only real indicator of her age was the four foot long braid of light grey hair she wore proudly, flicking it over her back. Aside from her growing greyer she was still very much as Akir remembered her, almond shaped fire nation eyes, a small hooked nose with a pointed, heart shaped jaw and wide, full lips that always seemed to have a slight smile. She still stood straight, tall and proud with a surprisingly trim figure and tastefully applied makeup. Her robes were crisply pressed, well made and freshly starched at the collars and the metal armour along her shoulders and forearms were polished to a shine.

"Yes, Professor Jitesh." The younger cultist said with a quick bow.

Akir half stifled a gasp and pulled himself back out of view.

Below, on the floor of the sunken campus the Professor looked up for a moment.

Mari finally managed to clamber up and began climbing into the room when she saw Akir frantically waving her away.

Jitesh's golden eyes narrowed for a moment. "I see you." The Professor said with a mocking, almost sing-song voice. With a surprising grace she pulled Mari down by her breastplate. She collided with the discoloured cobblestone streets hard, hard enough to wind her in fact. She coughed and spluttered, unable to catch her breath or sit up under the vice like embrace oh Jitesh's metalbending.

"Hmm, a Kyoshi Warrior." She mused. "I thought you all died in the Fall of Suki City. Still, I suppose I won't be wrong for long." She shrugged. She looked up again. "One more thing, you might as well come down Akir, I could feel your ridiculous sword-riding trick from my office."

"Xulin, what are you doing down here?" He yelled, barely risking it to look down at her. The other cultists were there as well numbering some thirty strong at least. Akir recognised a few other faces from the University's esteemed faculty.

"What are you doing here? I thought Grand Lotus Matsu had all of you evacuated during the first wave." She yelled up.

"Scouting mission." Akir said as he jumped down, careful to finish before he touched the ground.

"I'll ask you that again." She said sharply. "And this time you won't even attempt to trick me or I'll collapse the elevator shaft on all four of your friends. She said in a voice that reminded Akir of a few too many lectures.

"We're looking for a way to turn back ten thousand years of darkness." He answered. The Cultists watched him with a mix of pity and disgust.

"Nice costume, pig-sheep!" One of them yelled. Xulin silenced them with a look.

"You always were an ambitious thinker, perhaps demolition work would be a better way to spend your time though." She said, looking up at the ruined hulk of the building with a slightly amused smirk.

"Actually, that was my idea." Mari groaned with a small grin. "But your friends sure seemed to like it." Despite the pain in her voice the wicked grin Mari managed seemed rather genuine.

"I like her. Call the rest of your friends down here and I won't squeeze her chest cavity out through her mouth." With one arm outstretched she levitated Mari off the ground and held her limbs out in 'x' shape by her gauntlets and grieves.

"Put me down now and I won't squeeze your chest cavity out through your a-aaagh!" Before Mari could finish her threat she felt her breast plate clamp down hard enough to crack a rip.

"Yana, Nehal, Zhu-Rong, Narada, if you can hear me, come down peacefully. They have Mari and they're not afraid to collapse the building." Reluctantly they descended, on a line of rope, a gust of wind a pillar of flame and a slick of water respectively. As soon as they touched the ground the earth beneath them formed a tight prison up to their necks.

"So do you guys get captured a lot, or what?" Narada asked stiffly.

"It all started when we met you." Zhu-Rong answered with an unbroken calm.

Nehal and Yana just shared a look before they rolled their eyes. Nehal, as usual was struggling to try and break free, working herself into a state.

"Hmm, the Blue Spirit's pet ghost." Xulin said as she examined Yana. "They say no one has fought you and lived to tell the tale. From the look of things neither have you." Yana tried to make the correct sign to express her opinion on the matter but she was forced to settle for glaring at her.

"Who is this?" Zhu-Rong asked calmly, even under his black lensed goggles the cultists in front of him felt uneasy under his gaze.

"Professor Xulin Jitesh, Earthbending master, Inheritor to the Jitesh estate, the youngest Dean in the University's history and apparently a member of the Red Lotus." He answered warily. He wasn't under restraints or under attack yet he knew Xulin was trying to get something out of them. She had the same look in her eyes as when she was executing an ambush in a game of Pai-Sho.

"Now if you'd like to follow me we can talk in the main hall." She said. With an almost secondary wave of her finger they were all compelled to move along the cobblestone floor towards the heart of the university. Mari was dragged along as well, with her feet scraping along the floor as she tried to squirm loose of her armour. Akir moved under his own power but it certainly didn't feel like he had any say in the matter.

As they were dragged through the long street down the centre of the university Akir took stock of his surroundings. Spirit vines had overgrown the streets and some of the buildings, mostly the less important ones like the music studios and an old storage building. Old satomobiles sat there, cleaned and preserved like they were just going to drive them out for a night on the town. Old street lights lit the path up to the university, glowing brazenly for all the spirits to see. There were indeed many spirits, neither light nor dark, they lingered in between both states. Many were being chaperoned by cultists carrying sloshing waterskins. They sat under the amber cones of light the old bulbs could still manage staring up at it quietly .

Eventually they reached the main hall where the dormitories, and the student union converged. Behind it was the University's Sokka Memorial Museum the University's public archive of strange and wonderful exhibits from all over the world. It was made of imposing sand coloured marble with fine metal all around it's edges and a great glass roof that still radiated warm electric light. The central hall's main door was a brass and silver plated solid metal decorated and embroidered with stunning angular art of Bataar-Modern style architecture and stained glass windows coloured blue and purple. The cultists had taken loving care of the building, whilst even the air acolytes struggled to keep their overburdened temples clean and orderly they seemed to manage the many buildings of the campus well enough.

Xulin bought them up the ramp towards the great main doors and bought them into the foyer, repurposed as Xulin's personal throne room. Salvaged metal from all around the city had been smelted and reshaped to form a silvery throne the equal of the Earth Queen's. It was a wide ornate throne polished to a shine and inlaid with characters of faith and wisdom. Rather than a badgermole perched ominously above her head a massive metal lotus painted blood red sat above the back of her throne with a pair of surging spirits circling around it. On either side the doors leading to the dormitories sat closed and guarded by a single cultist each.

Ahead of it the solid bone war table of the early Water Tribe General Kilik The Great Stag of the North, carved from the skull of the largest known Elephant Whale and scrimshawed with his many exploits, picked out in sea blue ink faded by three thousand years' ravaging effect. It sat there, holding little besides a metal clan tea-set.

Xulin floated Mari into one of the glossy white arctic wood chairs around the table and pressed her down into it.

"Akir won't you have a seat." She asked sweetly as she sat at the head of the table, rather than the throne behind her.

"Yeah...um…we'd be happy to take a seat as well." Narada quipped. His beard was tangled beneath his stony embrace. Xulin merely rolled her yes and returned her attention to Akir.

Akir sat down at the opposite end of the table, closer to the rest of his team and to the door. "I don't understand, you worked with the White Lotus but you were never a member of the Order."

"I invite you into this sanctum and the first thing you do is ask questions?" She said with an almost offended gasp. "It is good to see this state of events has not impacted your curiosity. By the way, how is Seiko doing?" She said with a familiar, almost motherly voice.

"She's good, she manifested airbending, and went to the Southern Air Temple to train for a bit and then she became a Master Lotus assigned to Air Temple Island." He explained quickly, nervously. From the corner of his eye he could see Mari taking advantage of the distraction to try and unlace one of her gauntlets.

"She was that close, all this time?" She chuckled. "Perhaps I should arrange a visit." It sounded like the same cheerful young Dean he worked with years ago but from the mouth of a Red Lotus ringleader he couldn't separate it from a thinly veiled threat.

"Are you going to tell me how you joined the Red Lotus, or what?"

"The Red Lotus is made up of largely independent cells focused on conflict, politics or science." She explained. Mari was close to unstrapping a vambrace. "Whilst Zaheer and his group were meant to handle our martial concerns the traitor Unalaq was supposed to handle political matters. I was bought in to handle the group's scientific matters. And that's where you come in."

"You don't think I'm too 'indoctrinated' by the White Lotus to join." He answered mockingly. The clasp to one of Mari's vambrace was fully undone and she could freely work on the other arm whilst Xulin was busy talking.

"Your little institute of orthodoxy may be philosophically wrong but they are excellent educators. You were awarded a doctorate at sixteen, compared to worn out old teachers and under-grad zealots you're a catch." She explained. Xulin began to turn towards Mari for a moment before Nehal piped up.

"I'm pleased for you Akir, really." Nehal yelled sarcastically, still straining to break free. "But if he changes Lotuses what happens to us?" She asked.

"If he says yes then it's up to him, if he says no it's up to me. And you helped kill six of my colleges, so…." She explained quite casually, drawing a finger across her neck.

"So basically I choose between working under you or all of my friends die." Akir answered.

"You wouldn't work under me, the Red Lotus is a fellowship of equals; we ally ourselves with each-other at our own discretion. The people here don't follow my orders they do what I ask of them out of respect and deference. Join me and you can pursue knowledge and clarity for the rest of your life instead of bowing and scraping to the rich men and generals of an era now passed" She said proudly.

"Best he'll do is burry you!" Mari yelled as she slipped out of her breastplate. Unencumbered by her armour or weaponry she leapt across the thick bone table with a hand reaching to crush Xulin's neck.

Akir stopped her in mid-air with the tea tray, pushing her off and back into the wall. No more than a second later the door guards had her, one cuffed her whilst the other held a ball of fire close to her face.

"Traitor!" She yelled. "You greedy, pencil-necked sack of viper venom you could have been a hero!"

"It would seem I've made my choice." He answered blankly.

Xulin crossed the colossal table and put a hand on Akir's shoulder. "I'm so glad you made the right decision, and I promise you, if you want it, your friends will be given all the time in the world to come around."

Akir looked towards her, his face was sombre and stiff as he tried to ignore the chorus of insults his team yelled behind him.

All besides poor mute Yana. She always looked pained but her big blue eyes looked more hurt than he had seen anyone in all his life even in the last fourteen years of misery and loss, her eyes were the twin pinnacles of sorrow.


	9. Chapter 9: Six Feet Under

Comet was sat in yet another cell awaiting trial. At one time the prisons of the Earth Kingdom were famously hospitable but Queen Hou-Ting had done away with all that long before the austerity of the war forced them into further squalor. Comet had taken to sleeping under her cot to keep the indoor rain of her perennially leaking ceiling from disturbing her at night. The rest of the day she sat with her dirty captain's coat pulled over her head, just waiting for someone to come for her. This time she kept a hold of her hair pins. She clutched one of them in her hands, white knuckled and trembling from stress for hours on end. Comet had no idea what she was going to do when the time came. Assuming she even could kill a Royal Guard with a blade as long as her index finger she had no idea where to go from there; or what it would take to get home.

The rusted metal hatch of her cell screeched open. Comet let out a scream, half of rage and half of fright and came running up to the guard as the door opened. Almost as soon as she had gotten on her feet an indoor hurricane blew her off her feet and back into the opposite wall of her cell.

"That's hardly the attitude." A cocky voice said, cloaked in the meagre backlighting behind him he was nothing more than a slender silhouette. He walked into the cell carrying an airbending staff, a real one, not the cheap imitations the Regiments were issued. He was dark skinned with a shock of dark brown hair on the top of his head, though the rest of it was shaved. He wore airbender's arrows proudly though his were a bold, solid black. He dressed in loose travelling robes made of rough-spun grey cloth. He had a young face, thirty at the maximum and he had a sort of roguish charm to him that Comet imagined all rebels had.

"Comet, of Kyoshi Island?" He asked. She nodded. "Good. Sato, said she wasn't going anywhere without you."

"Who are you?" Comet asked wearily as she pulled herself up, she still hung onto her pin-dagger, though.

"I'm your way off the chopping block, kid." He answered a tad affronted, a tad amused.

"Name." Comet breathed, she held a dagger out between them, she hoped that with her back to the wall and the narrow space of the cell there wasn't much his airbending could do besides muss up her hair.

"My name is Kai, I'm here to rescue you and we don't have a lot of time to get out of here, so maybe you should put those away and come with me." He answered, trying to sound serious and mature but it was obviously put on judging by the slightly overdone way he attempted to lower his voice.

"Okay." Comet huffed and sheathed her dagger. Without a word Kai grabbed her by the hand. Even though her spindly legs were much longer than the airbender's he was still nearly dragging her down the narrow corridors. She tried not to notice the unnerving number of dead guards. She had never thought someone could so much with mere gusts of air, but there they were slammed against walls, dismembered by airblades, or simply hit so many times that bruised and bloody wrecks puffed out of their armour's face hole.

"Halt." A guard yelled as he came running up the stairs. He was not in fact a royal guard but a regular earth kingdom soldier armed with a warhammer and no bending. Kai spun round and sent him flying back down the narrow, twisting staircase with a single kick of his airbending. He dragged her to the end of a hall and a shuttered window at least two floors off the ground.

"Guess we aren't taking the stairs, eh?" Kai said dryly before be blew the window to smithereens.

"What no, there's no way I'm jumping out there."

"It'll be fine, I'll jump down first and cushion you with some airbending." He said. Before Comet had time to argue he back flipped out the window. Comet stood at the edge of the window, trying to peer out into the black of night for her rescue, she could just about make out the shape of a few cars and possibly Kai below her. She could hear more guards coming, shouting up the hallways and up the corridor. There were dozens of them at least. Comet took one last look behind her, closed her eyes and jumped out of the window.

She fell screaming out of the window and instead of splattering against the cold hard cobblestones of the Upper Ring Correctional Facility's grounds she was buffeted by a cushion of air and bounced off it only to land roughly in the back of a convertible sato mobile with a massive, exposed engine thrumming powerfully in the night. Their driver was a heavily tattooed man with long black hair and a proud mustache.

Asami was there in the back seat as well, she Comet down into the car properly. "Thank goodness, Comet I never would have forgiven myself if you got left behind." She answered pulling her in for a tight hug, before wincing and snapping out of it. Kai jumped and landed precisely in the gap between them.

"Come on Ghaz, let's move it." He said, playfully kicking the front seat.

"Not without the boss." He answered calmly, though there was slightly annoyed slant to his words.

A man with a ponytail in two-tones of grey skidded along the floor and out the front door of the facility. He carried at his side a shiny metal staff that made this unearthly whistling as he bent jets of air out of the small flute like tip behind him and sucked wind through the tip ahead of him. The staff pushed him to the edge of the car before he turned around and stood up in one fluid motion, pivoting on his staff.

"Halt rebel scum!" A warrior yelled as he came screaming out after him with two massive hunks of rock. "Under the law I am duly empowered to kill you if you resist."

"The law is just a choice other men made, I choose to ignore it." He answered in a low gravelly whisper that could barely be heard over the thrum of the v10 engine. What could be heard was the screeching whistle that emanated from his staff as it blasted out a jet of air. He shot up into the sky, at least twenty feet and pirouetted around the first boulder the Earthbender lobbed at him and then sliced the second such missile in half with a spinning slash of air projected from the tip of his staff. He landed so close to the earthbender that his last frightened breath blew across his face. The guard felt him press the end of his staff up under his chest. The thick padding of his armour did little to comfort him. With a hefty grunt the airbender reactived his staff. Near invisible blades of twisting wind cut deep holes through his torso and blew out half his chest cavity in a macabre shower of thick red ichor behind him.

He hopped into the front passenger seat. "Let's go, the Queen's men can't be far behind." He said calmly, a bit too calmly for someone who had just eviscerated a man. Regardless the satomobile sped off into the night. It kept its lights down low and made every effort not to stop for anything.

Eventually they reached a long boulevard of mostly abandoned estates that ended at the upper ring's wall. They weren't near a checkpoint, thankfully but a metres thick wall would be able to stop them just as swiftly as any crossing guards. "Um…wall!" Asami yelled as the meagre down-tilted glow of their headlights reached the thick imposing expanse of an ancient barrier that had stood up to much more than a single car crash. "Wall!" She yelled again, throwing up her hands in front of her face.

Two car lengths from the wall Ghazan tipped the flat stretch of road into a downward tilted ramp descending under the ground. At the last possible moment Ghazan threw on the car's brakes and spun it until it was skidding sideways down the ramp. About an arm's length from the wall's foundations they skidded to a stop in narrow cave barely wide enough for the satomibile .

"What on earth just happened." Asami yelled as they slowly drove down the artificial cave.

"In this city it pays to be an earthbender." Ghazan answered cryptically, with a little grin that twitched the dangling tips of his moustache.

"Are you going to explain who you are yet?" Asami shouted, partially out of fear and partly out of a struggle to be heard over the engine.

"When we get back to base." The airbender said. Eventually they reached their base. And what a base it was. A large palace surrounded by seven gold tiled stupas. Every wall and every roof was painted with what had once been the finest murals, now faded by time and the dampness of the cavern. It sat slanted on an unsteady foundation by the bank of an underground river filled with bioluminescent worm fish. All around the sanctuary giant glowing mushrooms grew up out of the muddy ground and hung down from the cave ceiling. Even the base itself glowed with countless candles and electric lights, completely unafraid of spirits so far under the ground.

They came to a stop under the weak cone of light coming from a jury rigged 'lamppost' essentially just a lantern nailed to a long wooden pole driven into the ground at the edge of the sunken palace's garden, a cluster of earthworks cut and carved into the shape of rose bushes and orchards and blossom trees. Dozens of silhouettes carrying lanterns came out of the temple, for a moment Comet tensed up until she could hear their echoing shouts and the laughter that carried through the cavern. They were a welcoming party.

"This place is beautiful." Asami commented under her breath.

"Is this the sunken mausoleum of Earth King Qun the Elder?" Comet asked, somewhat less impressed as she clambered out of the car. "I thought it was a myth."

"A student of history I see." Their apparent leader said as he too disembarked the car. He had broad rough features and a broad chin hidden by a thick, full beard as well as beaten in, cauliflower ears. He had the same black arrows as his followers emblazoned proudly on his forehead and hands as well as up his arms.

"Are you ever going to tell us who you are, or what we're doing here?" Asami asked, clutching heavily at the wooden staff Kai had given her to lean on.

"My name is Zaheer and I represent the Black Arrows Resistance Movement." The renegade airbender proclaimed as he gestured grandly to the many airbenders mixed into the crowd, all of them wore the arrows proudly on their skin and all of them carried staffs close at hand. They ranged from a pudgy middle aged man and his family to a pair of short, skinny children in their early teens.

"Zaheer? The terrorist Zaheer, who tried to abduct Korra as a child?" Asami yelled, hobbling between Comet and the stocky rebel. "Do you hear that!? This man is damned terrorist!" She yelled, harsh and angry enough to fill the cave.

He seemed nonplussed, even as she levelled the end of a cane at his chest. "My followers know what I've done. Our getway driver Ghazan was with me that day, as was Ming-Hua." He said, waving to the rail thin amputee playfully flicking one of the twin orphans up into the air with a flick of her liquid appendages.

"What did you rescue us for?" Comet asked, peering over Asami's shoulder, mostly she was just gawking at a woman with water for arms.

"Actually, we were just rescuing Sato, but she insisted that I come get you." Kai huffed.

"To get you back to the Republic, if you can believe it." Ghazan said, resting against the side of the car. If he much cared about the cane Asami was waving around the tattooed earthbender did not show it. Instead he played with the greying tips of his long, catfish moustache.

"Why?" Asami asked, her bright green eyes narrowed to sceptical squints.

"Please, why don't you come inside?" Zaheer said with an almost genuine smile.

"How do I know it isn't an ambush?" She pressed.

"Look up there, princess." Ghazan sneered, pointing to the cave ceiling. "See those stalactites, if I wanted you dead I could drop a dozen of them right on your head." He said, slowly, meticulously. "And there isn't a thing you could do to stop me."

"You know what, let's go indoors." Comet chimed in.

The crowd receded into the mighty, massive grave. It smelt of home cooked food and an old record player was echoing somewhere throughout its halls. Small children chased each-other over beautiful, if faded mosaics. Dozens of lanterns, candles and simple electric lights lit it up with a warm glow. Stacks of supplies lined the corridor and clothing hung from lines under the grand arches around the mausoleum perimeter. It was smelly, dirty and completely without privacy. It felt like home to Comet. No it felt better than home, the people here weren't disaffected refugees and grim United Forces veterans they were rebels and visionaries, and each one of them gave her this sort of friendly, knowing look like they were part of something important.

"Nice place…. for a tomb." Asami remarked glibly.

"Well it beats sucking up to rich idiots and politicians." Kai snapped.

Zaheer let both comments pass until they were at the centre of the breezy tomb. A circular obsidian hatch five men high and embellished with rampant badgermoles chisled into them sat wide open. Ghazan rolled the door out of the way with his bending revealing Qun's resting place. Unlike the cheerful, creamy white stone that the king's descendants had painted with gold embellishments and jade green murals the final chamber was the appropriate mournful black, though the obsidian walls were still glossy, lit by the finest quality crystals, that glowed with a warm amber light like the setting sun.

Qun's sarcophagus was stencilled with a twelve foot long bas-relief of the Thirteenth Earth King in all his finery and picked out in soft pearl. A few chairs were placed around it, turning it into an impromptu table.

"So is this where we find out you're into corpses, or are you actually going to explain why we're here." Asami chided.

"Perhaps I could explain." Said, the last person either Comet or Asami expected to see. Shan. His lipless smile glinted along with his round spectacles in the scattered light of the cave. Comet pulled one of her hairpins and very seriously considered trying to stab the most powerful man in Ba Sing Se.

"Are you kidding me? Former terrorists and the man who tried to get us executed." Comet hissed.

"I am sorry about your rough treatment but I needed your arrest and detainment on the royal records." He explained calmly, not rising from his seat. "The lovely Mister Jinywei's investigation led me to this little band of outlaws and I saw an opportunity. You see I am a close personal friend of Prince Wu, the next in line for the throne. He's an idiot." He said glibly. "If the Queen were to die I would be the ruler of Ba Sing Se in all but name, good for me, good for you, good the starving masses." He said with a little smile.

"And how does capturing us help?" Comet said as she took a seat at the far end of the chair.

"I'd settle for getting out of here." Asami grumbled.

"If we assassinate the Earth Queen the people will riot and the spirits will eat whatever's left of the city. However, some of the United Republic's government are eager to get at our ore mines for the war effort, all we need to do is provide them with an excuse, like 'disappearing' one of their greatest citizens and the developer of Project Sundown." Shan said with an eyebrow raised cockily.

"Disappearing?" Comet asked far too quickly.

"How do you know that name?" Asami hissed.

"I have friends in many corners, not least of all Warden Hong who is currently writing up a statement about how a bunch of conscripted airbenders suddenly attacked their facility and suggesting it was a false flag operation or Inquisitor Handan, who is presently informing his United Forces handler that you are being held for information by the Dai Li. When the first attack comes we kill the Queen whilst her palace guard are protecting the city, Wu takes over with the Republic's support and then I lead the reforms as their liaison." Shan said with this wide giddy smile that said he was far too pleased with himself. "Now if you excuse me all this explanation has me quite parched." He added before he took a sip of his tea.

"What happens if we don't go along with your little conspiracy?" Asami asked.

"Why would you, you've seen this city, you know it's being run into the ground and we're the only people in the city who can get you out of here." Shan answered.

"They're right Asami, I know that war is a terrible thing but we could really help people." Comet said meekly.

"Or you could just stay down here with Qun." Ming-Hua interjected, coiling a cold tendril of water around both Asami and Comet's shoulders. Her voice was thin and rasping with a vicious hiss to it like a snake darting around its prey.

"Now now, Ming, there's no need for violence just yet." Zaheer answered with a playful wave of his hand to signal her to back away.

"We can find you a bunk while you're with us, it won't be a luxury hotel, but it beats prison, trust me." Ghazan responded archly.

The moustachioed outlaw lead them out with Ming-Hua and took them to one of the tea rooms they had converted into living quarters. It was surprisingly tidy and the room still held onto some of its ancient lustre. There were five bunks and one of them was occupied by a sullen man in his thirties with a greasy mop of black hair thick glasses and stained, crumpled clothes.

"Are these the girls? They don't look so impressive." He said, with a heavy sigh at the beginning of each sentence and an even heavier sigh at the end.

"Yeah Ryu, and I don't wanna have to pull 'em off you like Kata and Umi." Ghazan said.

A chirpy little old woman with horn rimmed glasses appeared from an adjacent room.

"Don't worry, Ghazan we'll make them feel right at home, won't we Pa?" The incredibly petty refugee said to a man with long dour face sucking on an empty corn cob pipe. He merely grunted his approval. "Oooh, you're going to love it here with us, Pa just got the radio working and we're tuning in to, _Ting Ting Part Twelve: The Cabinet of Doctor Razor_." She added with a voice so sweet Asami was fairly sure she had contracted diabetes.

"Are you sure this isn't torture." Comet whispered back to Ming-Hua and Ghazan."

"Yes."

"No."

They answered before shutting the door behind them.

It was some hours later, before the woman known as Ma Jade and her husband who refused to be called anything but Pa were done harassing them with one sided small talk and admittedly excellent cookies.

"What is Project Sundown?" Comet whispered over the noise of the radio.

"Shh" Ma Jade said from the bottom bunk they were using as a couch.

"It's a top secret, but I can tell you it was one of our last hopes to turn the war in our favour." Asami answered.

Zaheer was sat in his chambers, in the lonely little bell tower at the top of the main tomb. They were surprisingly small chambers for a man of his renown and humble even by the standards of refugees and rebels, with an itchy bed and a few stacks of clothing and some old books. He assumed the lotus position under a tarnished golden bell and began to take a series of deep, rhythmic breaths.

He slipped away from the cave and out of the mortal world until he was in the Spirit World. He was stood above the cold white flame of Unalaq's control. The man himself was there, projected as a black figure patterned with red glyphs older than any other symbols in the universe.

"Zaheer, you're late. I was about to leave and let these spirits go back to their chaos." Unalaq threatened idly. "Would have made a terrible mess of you."

"I have done as you asked, the Sato girl is with us and that fool Shan is relaying his intelligence to the United Forces."

"I assume they suspect nothing?" Unalaaq answered.

"No, they don't now let P'Li in here I want to see her." Zaheer commanded though the snarling spirits around him soon made it clear he was far from in control of the situation.

"Very well." With a slight pause the towering form of P'Li appeared next to him.

"Zaheer!" She yelled with a desperate, longing look on her thin face.

She went to sweep him up into her embrace before Unalaq ejected her from the spirit world again.

"Were you ever a brother of mine?" He asked, arms still out waiting for a lover no longer there.

"No, not really." He said deadpan before he peered down to the defeated revolutionary and whispered in his cauliflower ear. "When Ba Sing Se is rubble you will have your dearly beloved."


	10. Chapter 10: Escape from Republic City

The Hannapin sat lightly on the courtyard to Air Temple Island, still lashed to the ground by thick chains that clanked and rattled in the weeklong storm. The temple's leaking roofs had become swamped in the deluge until the kitchen's pan cupboards were emptied to catch leaks that splashed down in near every room of every building. Kei-Shek had relocated to the sturdier, warmer airship and was sat at one end of the planning table in the cargo hold.

"Must you give me that look?" Kei-Shek said as he looked up from his papers to see Seiko glowering at him on her way into the room with a cold gust that whipped the rainwater from her body. "They've been gone a week and a half." She continued to glare at him. "Besides, if I wasn't in here the men would be tripping over themselves to fly off and abandon their post."

"Perhaps, but I bet central heating and a solid roof help as well." Seiko answered wearily.

"This is Nehal." The Captain's voice came in crackling over the intercom. She yelled over the sound of fists knocking against a door. "I'm requesting an immediate evac, I repeat, immediate evac, same places as Hiro picked us up, wounded lots of them."

"I see you've finally put on the robe I gave you?" Xulin said, not taking her eyes off the many books she had open on a long round table by a stained glass window, overlooking the main hall, the silver throne she never sat on was glinting proudly through the coloured glass.

"Well your friends kept giving me weird looks in my old vestments." He answered evenly and technically it was also the truth. Not that Akir felt any more comfortable in his enemy's uniform.

"Have you made any headway with your former friends?" Xulin asked, finally turning around her heels.

"I feel like we're getting closer but nothing tangible." He answered, again technically true but the longer these meetings with Xulin went on the more it felt like he was digging through to his own grave. "I haven't seen them today though."

"Well, it's not like we have a deadline I suppose." She said with a casual shrug before she took a sip of steadily cooling sweet-hibiscus tea. "Still, I can only persuade them to spare your friends for so long." She said after a long, relaxed sip of the home-brewed tea.

"If you'll excuse me, I'll go to see them now." Akir said with a deferential bow.

Xulin's followers had just about come to recognise him as one of their own but he still caught a few too many odd looks from them as he crossed from their museum into the university proper. He braved the cafeteria around noon, and as usual most of the cultists were making surprisingly idle conversation over lunch. That all stopped when he entered the room. He kept his head down and avoided looking at anyone as a he route-marched to the kitchens. Some of the walk-in refrigerators behind the cafeteria had been converted to serve as prisons, or in Zhu-Rong's case they hadn't been altered at all. He peered through the frosted over window to see him huddled under his bedroll with a cloud of steam rising off his shivering back, the proud stranger forced to use his fearsome firebending just to keep himself warm. Nehal's freezer had been padded like a mental ward to contain her repeated attempts to blast through the sturdy metal box she found herself in. Narada's cell had actually been heated, kept too warm and too dry for him to gather much more water than his own urine that slipped through the metal-grate floor and boiled away on a heating element. Mari and Yana got off fairly lightly, just a small prison cell with an awful bed.

"What are you here for Akir." Hood, one of the 'guards' said, though it was hard to take a former member of their Collegiate Bending teams seriously considering they lost to the Fighting-Wolftails two years in a row.

"Yana." He said briskly, gesturing to the cell at the end.

"Oh yeah, real stimulating conversation that one." Said Sud, Hood's fellow player and now his fellow guard.

"She may not talk." He said, a dirty grin forming on his thin, dry lips. "But she's a real screamer." He whispered, far too close to Hood's face for comfort.

Hood tried not to wretch whilst Sud finally complied and opened the door. Akir unwrapped his robe and placed it over the freezer window.

Inside Yana was sat beside the bed on the harsh steel floor with her back to the door. She didn't have her scarf or her face mask on they had taken it from her, just a cascade of long bedraggled hair that trailed down her back. She peeked through the curtain of hair and quickly scrabbled into a corner. After that she still didn't turn around.

Akir slid the door to a close gently before he got on his knees behind Yana.

"I know you don't want to talk to me." He began hesitantly. "But you're the only one I can trust with this." his voice was soft and slow, he still felt the weight of his guilt pressing down on him like a heavy yoke across his shoulders. "I know that I must look like nothing but a traitor to you but there's more at stake than both of us, would you please just turn around."

Yana pulled in tighter upon herself, the sinewy muscles along her back pulled as hard as corded steel beneath her skin as she tensed herself into a an angry, insular ball. "Come on, let's be reasonable." Akir said as he pulled her around until she was face to face with him. Though in truth Yana no longer possessed a whole face. A pert, and pointed nose was lightly scarred at the tip and from there became worse, starting at a lopsided upper lip made up of stiff scarred tissue fused directly into her gums and which came to its wretched zenith at half a bottom jaw that stopped before her canines exposing an almost toothless mouth and a stump of a tongue and all of it covered in crumpled, pale burn marks and the small angular scars of surgical incisions. She forced a gasping breath and then struck out with a swift kick that knocked Akir back from her and onto the hard metal floor.

She was facing him now, with her hands perched over the bottom half of her face. Hot, furious eyes glared angrily at him as she scowled as mightily as she could manage. "I'm sorry." Akir said as he undid the blue silk string holding his patch on. Beneath it was a completely smooth drum of skin over an empty eye socket. "I was born without my eye so I won't pretend to know what it's like to be so wounded." He said, handing the curved metal patch over to Yana gently. She felt it in her hands, it had the soft heat of his body warmth on it and the wavy platinum was as smooth as wet glass. "But all my life I've hidden this from the world. But I don't think we have to hide from each other." He managed a small smile.

Yana put her hands to her side and nodded slowly, her ragged mouth bare and uncovered. .

_So can we talk" _Akir signed. 

_What about_The furrowed brow that always buried her bright eyes seemed to relent for a moment and she unwound her poised body into a comfortable slouch. _Because I can tell you right now I'd rather die than join that woman. _

_Do you seriously think that I'm working with Xulin?_ Akir answered, stifling the urge to shout it back at her._ I have given my life to the White Lotus, I won't give up on it just for one old friend. _

How should I know? I knew you for half a day before we got thrown in prison.

_Look. I'm working with her because the important artefacts are being kept in the University's vault_.

_Why don't you just metalbend it open_?

_This vault was meant to keep out __**anyone **__it's made of a hardened platinum isotope, not even Comandant Beifong could bend it and If I try to cut it open I'll probably trip one of about ten dozen alarms" _

_So what are you going to do? _

_The vault will open the next time a ritual is started, all I have to do is say I'm prepared to help in the next one and whilst it's out in the open we steal it and escape. _

_I've been trying to get out of here; it's not going to happen. _

Akir unthreaded a few screws along the base of the old refrigerator and bent back some of the skirting to expose Narada's cell. Hot, dry and acrid air wafted out of it into the room. _Not enough to get out of here but perhaps enough to give Narada a drink? _Akir answered.

When do we go? She signed.

Noon, tomorrow. He answered before he picked up his eyepatch. Oh, and here. He said, pulling a long, thick silk sash from up his sleeve. For later.

He drew his robes back around him and opened the door with a quick application of metalbending.

"Well gentlemen." He said, making a show of adjusting his trousers. "I'll see you all later." He swaggered past them with the same strutting air he was used to putting on and disappeared out into the greater campus.

"Hiro!" Kei-Shek called into his radio. A minute later the lieutenant had ran up from the docks to meet them, he was red faced and panting, wheezing through smoker's lungs.

"Sir." He said, saluting loosely before he went back to panting with his hands on his knees.

"You can fly an airship, right?" Kei-Shek asked as he stood up from the table.

"Whatever Hasook said he's lying, I was totally **not** going to steal this thing." Hiro answered defensively between breaths.

Kei-Shek and Seiko exchanged looks for a minute. "No, Akir just radioed in he's requesting an immediate evac, you have ten minutes to get the ship airworthy. Kei-Shek explained rapid fire before he stood up and made for the cargo door. "I'll ready the troops."

Akir had destroyed the previous altar. Instead they assembled under the slumped tower of the hotel that had consumed it. The hotel was propped up by a sturdy scaffold. In the shade of this broken tower they had built a new altar and placed both the bronze dagger and its accompanying bowl. Six of the cult's waterbenders had formed a small choir at the rear of the altar. Assembled further back. The trained spirits coiled around the toppled building, slowly growing more restless as they waited for whatever the ritual provided.

Akir laid hands to the dagger and the bowl. It had a numbing cold despite the University's relative warmth. Each engraving stung and bit at his hands and the seemingly smooth bronze they were made of had the cut-glass texture of shark skin. Akir picked up the dagger, it was heavy in his hand. The longer he held it in his hands the more he wanted to loose hold of his lunch. His heart was pounding in his chest and adrenaline pulsed through his brain. Akir took a deep breath and with his left hand launched the bronze dagger into the heart of the nearest waterbender. In one fluid motion he drew his sword, whirled around and slashed open three throats. The last two watebenders launched their attacks, blade sharp ribbons of water lashed at him. In a graceful spiral movement he leapt off of his feet and found safe space, weaving between their attacks. A quartet of ball bearings shot out of Akir's sleeve and pulverised the skull of one cultist with a wet ragged crunch. The last of them he dispatched with an impromptu lobotomy from his white bone dagger, held in his off hand. He sheathed his weapons and grabbed both the bowl and the dagger.

A plume of firebending rocket towards him, evaded by the spool of cable he kept on his wrist which he fired at the nearest building and pulled himself towards, the fire flew past him, separated by such a thin margin that he could feel the intense heat of it cooking the air by his gut.

The already pensive spirits turned dark and rabid in proximity to so much killing and descended from the Atman building to ravage their semi-allied cultists.

"Contain them!" Xulin ordered. "Sud, Hood we're going for Akir."

He landed safely but as soon as he did he felt himself being dragged backwards at the waist. He slid and thrashed across the campus grounds. As he twisted to face his attacker he saw Xulin standing there pulling the star-metal in his sword and dragging him by it. He fought with the buckle of his sword belt and yanked it loose, drawing the belts towards her and leaving him behind. He quickly disposed of his cable spool and even abandoned the bowl and dagger, watching it clatter to the floor and slide back to Xulin.

"The Sword of the Si Wong Desert without his sword, and without his desert." Xulin observed. "Guess that makes you nothing." She said as the sword glided into her hands.

Rather than fight back or argue Akir took one look at his precious sword and ran, sliding along the ground on little earthen wedges. He evaded molecule thin water whips from Hood as well as bolts of lightning from Sud. All around him the spirits became rabid, attacking their masters or tearing into the campus facilities. Xulin saw her good work crumbling and contorting before her eyes as she coursed after Akir on a levitating rock.

Jagged earthen spikes sprung up from the ground as Akir sped towards the rear of the university. "You can run!" Xulin yelled as she cut an errant spirit down. "But you can't escape my sight."

A bolt of lightning at her feet knocked Xulin to the ground. "Perhaps he won't have to." Zhu-Rong said from the roof of the canteen.

Without a word Xulin bought the entire building down in one calm motion. As the building shook Zhu-Rong propelled himself and Mari off in one gust of flame whilst Narada used a tendril of water to swing himself and Yana off of the building. Nehal jetted off on a pillar of air, launching herself straight at Xulin. Her fist met the elder professor's face, hard, and knocked her back into the ground. Another blow and another rained onto her face before she could knock Nehal off with a shaft of rock to the flank.

Mari dodged Sud's fire blasts, twisting around the searing heat until she was right in his face. A single, massive fist to the throat crushed his trachea before she grabbed his jaw and the opposite side of his head. One fierce twist set it at an unnatural angle and he flopped screaming his last breath like a boneless squid on the ground as his paralyzed body died.

Zhu-Rong incinerated Hood with an uncharacteristically hot stream of flame that grew blue-hot and evaporated Hood's water barrier before engulfing him with a flame hotter than any other. There was a ragged agonising scream and the smell of cooking pork filled the air until his upper half was burnt down to a blackened skeleton.

Standing furiously, with soft grey hair in disarray Xulin ripped the girders from the collapsed cafeteria and attempted to squash, smash or splatter her attackers. One beam nearly made a red mess of Zhu-Rong before Narada cut it in half with a razor sharp water whip.

Yana, weaved around the earth spikes Xulin had erected in her defence and paralyzed her with a quick bout of chi-blocking punches. She snapped off a sharp stalagmite and levelled it over the crippled academic's head.

"No!" Akir yelled over the commotion, he crumbled the stalagmite into dust as she tried to bring it down. "Nehal, I want you to get the radio labs, southeast building, second floor room two-o-eight. Call for an evac then tell Nagant where to meet them" He ordered. "Yana, Mari your gear's probably in the main hall go there and get it." They both gave him a somewhat quizzical look. "This is my operation, now move!" He commanded, raising his voice above the spirits and cultists fighting at the far end of the campus. "Narada, Zhu-Rong, there's a ramp up to the surface in the parking lots to the west of the archives, I want you to get some escape vehicles there pronto. Whoever isn't there in twenty minutes has to find their own way out"

"And what about you?" Nehal asked as she made for the radio labs.

"I'm going to Xulin's office, I'm sure there's too much here to abandon." He explained between quick breaths. "And here." He said levitating his sword and it's scabbard as well as the bowl and its dagger towards Mari, and Zhu Rong respectively. "Just in case." He said with a quick nod. Mari passed the bone dagger off to Yana before they made their way to the back of the campus.

"You aren't going to kill me I noticed." Xulin observed, lying flat on her back, looking up at the starry night through the hole in the underground.

"You were my teacher." He said kneeling beside her. "You were my friend, I loved you like you were family, more than my family." He said, the hurt pouring out of his strained voice. "Why did you have to do this?"

"The minute you got here I could tell you were trying to keep something from me, the way your heart sped up whenever I asked you something, you always did that when you were nervous." She chuckled a moment, nostalgically. "But I loved you enough to give you the benefit of the doubt. So the question is why did _you_ have to destroy everything I built here?" She said emptily. There was a long pained pause as she took a breath and then looked back at him. "You'd better go, I can feel my followers dropping like flies, the spirits will be here soon."

Akir turned his back and ran towards the archive, his tired empty legs carried the weary explorer as fast as they still could. What few cultists were there he dispatched quickly and efficiently. A metal pan to the head, one he impaled on a sharpened spike from the wall and another he crushed under a self-collapsed stairwell. He walked the deserted corridors, now akin to a hundred thousand other desolate halls that dotted the dark and hostile world.

He padded up the stairs until he was in Xulin's office. He quickly poured over esteemed tomes and ancient scrolls. The sight of a battered old file, singed in one corner but still emblazoned with classified stamps and a title that read 'Sundown' He gasped and immediately held it over the nearest candle before throwing the burning folder to the floor. The treasure trove of knowledge became a curse as he realised each book was so dense, so important that he could scarcely estimate which ones he could leave and which he had to take with him. He grabbed the fraction of texts that he hoped would be helpful and made for the exit. As he turned around a wall of rock launched him through the stained glass and out onto Kilik's war table.

Dazed and winded he coughed and spluttered on the massive skull table. Leaping out after him on a line from his own cable gauntlet Xulin descended, at last sitting on her metal throne, though in the ruined hall it seemed a sad sight, one last bastion of beauty in a ruined room.

"I don't want to do this Akir." She said, as she started deforming the throne, cannibalizing the glossy metal into razor sharp spikes. "But I can't let you upset the natural order of the cosmos." She was almost pleading. "Just put the books down and we can both go our separate ways."

"How did you get free." Akir asked, rather than answering Xulin's challenge.

She cracked a grin. _Ever the student. _She thought."I mastered my chi a long time ago; it will take more than a few pressure points to keep me down." Akir stood up and hopped off the table into a fighting pose. "You know how this fight is going to go." She said, forlornly.

"I do." He answered grimly. "And I don't care."

With one last deep breath Xulin flared the throne out into hundreds of metal spikes and launched the sleet of razor sharp steel at him. He skidded under the massive bone table, looking up at a jaw and a large hollow braincase he saw the metal spikes lodge in, none of them reaching him. He shot back out from under the table just as Xulin upended it with a pillar of earth meant to crush Akir flat. The spikes had shot their entire length into the ground leaving only holes from their passing. In retaliation he used another bit of rock to catapult the engraved skull straight at Xulin. She used the embedded razors to explode it into powdered bone dust and then launched the aforementioned spikes straight back at Akir.

"Whatever happened to your appreciation for the antiques?" Xulin teased as she launched the spikes with murderous intent. Dodging and deflecting in a series of rapid, spinning movements borrowed from Eastern Style airbending he evaded the metal shards and landed amidst them with a cat like poise.

"I appreciate you, don't I?" He retorted and punctuated it with a furious flurry of fouetté kicks that sent small, hard chunks of the floor at her. She blocked it with a straight, sturdy slab of earth that she propelled across the ground towards him. He pirouetted around the slab and then weaved through spikes coming out from the earth. She had him now, Akir was faster than her but he was stuck dodging and jinking around a constant barrage of spikes and jutting lumps of rock. With the barest movements she had him dancing on a string.

"How long are your friends going to wait for you?" She said mockingly. "If you hadn't gotten greedy you might have escaped by now." She said as she flicked another boulder the size of a man with the barest wave of her hand. As she moved her sleeve pulled back revealing his gauntlet on her wrist. He bent it, dragging her hand into her face as a powerful backhanded slap that bruised an imprint of his elegantly appointed cable gauntlet across her nose and cheek. Stars filled her vision and she staggered backwards. She tried to bend something, a lazy half formed motion that threw a shard of her shattered throne which Akir easily evaded. A lump of earth struck her in the chest winding her she tried to bend and he hit her again, repeating the process twice more until he launched a sharp jag of stone into her gut, propelling her into the back wall with a hard, bloody grunt.

"I'm sorry." Akir said as he ran up to her. The elegant older woman was now just as dishevelled as many a refugee with messy hair, painful wounds and blood staining her fine robes.

"I'm sorry too." She said, running a bloodied, trembling hand through his hair. "We could have done exceptional things together. Your project Sundown….truly inspired."

"Can't you just be the kindly professor you used to be?" He pleaded.

"Like I said, this was always me." She said between ragged breaths. "Now go. No sense both of us dying." She put out a weak arm, weighed down by the cable bracer. "And take this bloody thing with you." Her eyes closed and her breathing slowed as if in meditation.

Akir wandered over to the parking lot. Half the campus was collapsed, or on fire now and massive spirits were beginning to take interest, pouring into the sunken campus from above. He affixed his cable and then yanked himself up to the top floor.

"Get any good books." Nehal half jokes as she peaked up from the bonnet of a sporty red coupe satombile. Next to it was a blue convertible that used to belong to Dean Meruk and lastly a brushed silver roadster with chromed piping that had once been Xulin's.

"Tons, now let's get out of here." He said as he hopped into the driver's seat of Xulin's car. Nehal hopped in afterwards whilst Yana and Narada got into the low red coupe and Zhu-Rong and Mari sat in the blue one, the giant Kioshi Islander towered over the low profile windscreen.

The trio of sporty, well looked after engines thrummed mightily until they blitzed out of the sinkhole. "Everyone follow me, and try not to get stuck in traffic." Akir said with a little, slightly put on grin.

"Do you even know how to drive." Zhu-Rong whispered as Mari twisted the ignition with an air of unfamiliarity.

"I learnt how to drive a jeep, this is close enough." She answered as she crunched into first gear, ready to move off.

Akir pulled away first and immediately Yana moved to overtake the blue car.

"I am not losing to them." Zhu-Rong huffed, exhaling a petulant flame. They sped down bumpy, cobbled streets overran with vines and spirits, moving too fast for the shadowy beasts to keep up. They paced up the streets until they were by the familiar entrance to the subway.

A few blocks down Kei-Shek and his men were obviously clamouring with Nagant's people. Behind them the Hanapin's proud, beautiful bulk laid behind them, filling the street with its wide envelopes and its colossal engines.

"Stand down Captain, that's an order." Kei-Shek said, gripping the stock of his crossbow tighter.

"I'm done taking orders from fat officers behind a damn desk. _Colonel_" Nagant yelled slanting Kei-Shek's rank as insult. He put his hands to the grip of his sword. Kei-Shek's men readied their weapons and their bending, Nagant's men did the same.

"You self-righteous deserter!" Kei-Shek yelled, affronted. "If you think one moment watching my home be over run was easy then you are the stupidest little-"The sound of approaching engines put an end to the Colonel's tirade.

Akir stopped the car in front of them and leapt out. "Hey hey, we've got to move." Akir said as he pointed to the swelling cloud spirit that began to thunder and boom as it slowly poured downwards through the sky like dripping oil at the end of its descending tendril it began to manifest a mouth that glowed with a bright violet energy. "Okay, everyone into the airship, that's my order." He commanded. He flung Kei-Shek's metal command table out into the street and upended it as a barrier, and did the same with the metal crates he could move, stacking them into barricades as the first spirits began to attack.

"Sick and children first." Nagant ordered as his civilians staggered onto the airship desperately. All but one, Lang squirmed out of his mother's grasp and ran over to Yana who picked him up and touched her head to his.

_Go with your mother I'll be right there_. She signed to him. Lang nodded back.

Eventually everyone was packed tight into the cargo hold, the corridors the quarters, every room they could find. , its actual cargo disgorged into the street. They were packed so tight in fact that Nehal went to the cockpit door to enter. Hiro was there, dressed in his full uniform for a change.

"I kept the seat warm." He said with a little smile before he got out of the rouged leather throne.

"Oh I'm feeling hotter already." She answered with a little grin as she hopped into the chair and fired up the engines. She pushed them full throttle and tilted them to the ascent angle but the normally quick, light ship couldn't move. "Oh damn." She said, as she noticed a massive signature on her radar.

"We have a problem." Nehal's voice said hazily into the hushed, hot hold. "The ship's overweight, we can't take off." She lowered the hydraulic ramp again. "We'll keep trying to lift off, keep bailing stuff out until we can go."

"We already did." Akir yelled as the passengers began to chatter frightfully. "We had to, to fit everyone on."

Kei-Shek looked at his heavy metal flak jacket and his heavy webbing of supplies and ammo, then to his men. They were still at the entrance, guarding it against the onslaught that they could feel coming now, in the high screeches that echoed hungrily down the street.

"Akir." Kei-Shek whispered to the panicking Lotus. He turned around and looked at him, his one eye wide and focussed intently. "Do you believe your findings can help us take back the city."

"I-I do." Akir answered, picking up on the Colonel's dire tone.

Kei-Shek gulped heavily, his eyes were wide and on the verge of tears. "Then when this is all over…I don't know name a park bench after me or something." He said rapidly before he shuffled to the edge of the cargo ramp. He looked at his troops, frightened yet focussed as they watched the spirits drawing nearer. "Men." He yelled with a ragged weary voice as he drew his officer's sword. "Stand at arms." He said as he raised high into the air "Advance!" He charged off the airship, yelling in one powerful roar that grew to a fearsome chorus as his men surged out of the rear of the craft, their crossbow bolts exploding against the shadowy spirits. Gouts of fire, shards of earth and typhoons of air and water battered the opposing monstrosities.

"Whatever you did we've got lift, let's get out of here." Nehal said over the speakers. As the ramp closed they could see more spirits, large and deadly closing in on them in droves as huge arcs of lightning shot out of Kei-Shek's firebenders. The craft flew back to the island at half its regular speed with the cloud spirit in tow. All around its thunderhead small apertures festered and grey, erupting with small, inaccurate pulses of purple energy that Nehal managed to narrowly evade, throwing the passengers around as it twisted in the air.

"The ship's still too heavy, we'll never evade it!" Nehal yelled into the speaker. She momentarily eyed the parachute at the back of the cockpit before she turned back around. "We're not there yet." She muttered to herself.

"Open the ramp, we'll try to fight it off." Nagant commanded.

Cold wind rushed in as they stared down the colossal abomination. Almost immediately everyone armed or bending launched whatever they could at the creature, sticking in its shadowy body simply failing to do any notable damage. In retaliation it manifested a long chasm straight to this swirling sun like sphere of purple spiritual energy that erupted into a bright pillar of energy which lanced a few inches from the side of them as Nehal tilted the craft out of the way.

"Well, unless people are ready to jump off the edge I suppose we're screwed." Mari said as she looked over the edge.

"Actually….I've got an idea. Akir said as he disappeared back into the workshop. He reappeared a moment later, carrying a hard angular glass case full of his mercury. He shattered the glass with a quick application of glassbending and then levitated the ball of mercury above one of his hands. He wound his gauntlet around one of the hydraulic pistons by the entrance to the ramp and tugged on it to test the grip.

"What are you doing?" Zhu-Rong asked as he watched the metal bender handle it at the edge of the craft.

"I 'm going to jump down that thing's throat and hope for the best!" He yelled over the roar of the overtaxed engines. "I need you to electrocute my cable ten seconds after I jump."

"That might kill you." Zhu-Rong observed. After seeing his stony face long enough Akir could safely estimate that Zhu-Rong was somewhat unhappy about that prospect.

"Then make sure you kill me at the right time." Akir quipped before he had time to let his mortality sink in. The black umbral mist of its body began to recede as it presented its purple core which began to flash and pulse rapidly.

Akir yelled a curse and jumped out into the cold and dark, engulfed by the creature's shadowy mass. He fell slowly in the pitch black, the cold nipping at him and sucking his vital energy out until he felt ready to freeze over. He bent the mercury into a razor thin whip of metal that pierced into the amethyst star at the spirit's centre as it grew in size and fury, about to release a beam of murderous energy. As hard as he could feel the whirling energy try to expunge the mercury he managed to keep it intact right to the centre. A second later Zhu-Rong's lightning sped down the metal cable and arced through his body. Where he had been cold a white hot burning agony seared his every nerve and then jumped from his hand to the mercury which lanced into the creatures core. The lightning arced out through its cloudy body burning it up like wax paper under a fire until it was just tattered wisps of immaterial matter raining down into Yue Bay.

For a moment there was something like daylight where the colossal spirit had just been. The cargo deck erupted into celebration. "He's not moving!" Mari yelled as she began pulling his line in.

He was smouldering and twitching his fingers intermittently. His eye was rolled back in his socket and he was barely breathing.


	11. Chapter 11: City of Walls and Secrets

"Why don't you take a deep breath." And then everything went mad.

Comet sat in the dead king's crypt, longing to join him in death's silent cradle. Ma Jade's A Capella group was over for another session. Ming-Hua was a talented healer, able to set Asami's bones straight with only the slightest effort. She was definitely not a falsetto, however.

A heavy knock against the door stifled the infernal caterwauling "Ming." Ghazan said as he opened the door apprehensively.

"What?" She rasped. "We were in the middle of Love Amongst the Dragons." She huffed, flailing her water arms like a petulant teenager.

"Mission's on, Shan tells us that the United Forces are ten clicks out." Ghazan answered, supressing a grin. "You're getting better you know, Kuon hasn't complained today."

Ming-Hua glared daggers at him, fortunately the metaphorical kind not the ice dagger kind. Again. "You never take my hobbies seriously." She huffed finally.

"I'm way too old for this." Asami said, trying to shut out the beginning of an international super terrorist dispute.

"Same." Said the sixteen year old Comet.

"Asami, Comet, you too." He said, throwing them both some loose, faded military surplus gear.

"Whoah, whoah what are we going for?" Asami asked from the thick mat they were sat on.

"We need you to radio the United Fleet." Ghazan explained, leaning in the doorway. "Kai can look after you, meet us at the cars in ten minutes."

Asami and Comet both walked out to the cars and this time there were many satomobiles and many black arrows piling into them. The general commotion of a mobilising militia came to an end as they heard the distinctive whistling of Zaheer's jet staff. He landed lightly on the bonnet of his own car, sat between two rows of the sixty car fleet of satomobiles and cabbage cars stolen from around the city. He had changed his loose light robes for a set of grey fatigues and a large grey scarf. He looked up, surveying the three hundred strong force of black arrows and rebel earthbenders gathered around him, looking up in the warm lamplight and hanging on his every word. Behind them the civilians watched pensively as their sons and daughters went off to face two of the largest armies still standing.

"Far above us the United Forces are about to attack this city." He declared, to rapt gasps. "Today the stagnant armies of the old world will meet here and they will be defeated by us. This brave and lucky few will change the course of the world. We will slay the Earth Queen in her own palace, we will take back this city and then we will declare victory for a people who have been oppressed and abused for too long." He yelled to a cheering audience. "Today is the beginning of a new future, a future built by us!"

"Alright move out!" Ghazan yelled over the ensuing applause, as Zaheer sat back down into his passenger seat. "Zaheer myself and Ming-Hua are going to the palace." Cars One to fifty-five are with us, right the way to the throne room. Everyone else is going under Kai's command."

Kai led them to their car, number fifty six. Kuon, sat in the driver's seat, a pair of racing goggles of his bald head. Kai assumed the front passenger seat and invited Asami and Comet into the rear. The satomobiles sped off at breakneck speeds and then ascended into the layer of manmade catacombs beneath Ba Sing Se. Ghazan blew a whole out of the ceiling and earthbent a ramp. They erupted out of the ground in front of a royal soldier. Zaheer didn't even bother to stand when he bisected him with a razor thin blade of air.

As anticipated the royal guard were mostly gone, protecting the Queen's city rather than the Queen herself. The few that were there were still a formidable threat, however. Spotlights illuminated them whilst rock missiles and war-coins rained down on them. The cars, those of them not crushed in the opening salvo like car five and car thirty-two scattered and began weaving and dodging towards their targets.

Up above most of the airships had already lifted off to join the air battle with United Forces blimps. It was worse than they could have anticipated. The bold red of Fire Nation airships, drab blue Water Tribe craft and even a technicolour fleet of privateer vessels were behind them. Cannon shot and flaming shells collided a thousand feet in the air. Damaged airships fell to the ground in slow motion with burning envolopes on both sides. The first felled vessel landed on a hundred year old tea shop.

"It's started." Asami said, looking up at the battlefield sky. "It's finally started."

"How the hell are we supposed to take down the Palace with fifty cars!?" Comet yelled as a war coin embedded itself in the outer palace's flagstone about an arm's length from the car.

"Easy" Kai said, pointing to the hulking forms of Airships berthed outside the palace. "The best air-regiments around are all on the Airships." Kai yelled as they pulled an evasive around an angular contusion of earth. "We have men on the inside, spreading dissent, undermining defences. We have a full thousand men ready to go." The rebel airbender said with wicked, wry grin.

As if on cue the airships still on the ground began to explode. Some had their envelopes blown to pieces by a chorus of airbenders other went up in clouds of detonated aviation fuel. One, the largest and proudest, the _Middle Kingdom_ attempted a lift off. Massive propellers turned to full speed dragged countless men and women on the ground into the whirling metal death of their engines as it tried to rise up from the ground. It managed to lift some thirty metres before it tipped up and crashed back aft-first into the palace grounds. Airbenders flew out of the ruined vessel, at least one of them on fire.

Overwhelmed the queen's defenders were now stuck as the common enemy in a four way battle. Captured cannon emplacements on the grounded airships blasted huge holes in their ranks and erupted craters in the thousand year old flagstone. Even shackled the airbenders fought on fiercely.

By the time Kai's group could enter the fray it was mostly just the victorious airbenders seeing to executions and post victory looting.

In the wreck of the Middle Kingdom one airbender lofted the head of Captain How to a cheering crowd. Geung and Zhun were tied up beside him, both of them bound and gagged.

"Kai!" The airbender yelled, excited.

"Breeze!" He yelled back to the aptly named airbender. "I knew you'd whip these no good airheads into shape he said before they pulled each other in for a fond hug, apparently a severed head in her hand did little to put Kai off. She wore her uniform half open and without regard for defunct appearance regulations as well as taking the Captain's hat as trophy over her long black hair.

"I know you wanted the radio room intact so we dethatched that godola before they tried to launch it." She explained quickly as she lead them aft of the ruined airship, with Captain How still in tow.

Sat in the middle of the yellow boundaries of the Middle Kingdom's berth and still sitting in the shade of its wrecked rear was the command and control gondola sitting on one side in the cold hard ground. Strewn around the outside of the craft were bridge technicians and coms officers, mostly unarmed.

"They wouldn't even have been here if it weren't for us." Comet whispered to Asami.

"I know, but….let's try not to think about it." Asami said desperately.

Asami and Comet clambered into the separated gondola under escort. Papers and loose equipment had naturally been thrown everywhere but the radio was still projecting the noise of the already airborne fleet with remarkable clarity.

Asami bent over the first radio console she could find and set it to the United Forces command frequency.

"This is Asami Sato my friend and I have been rescued from the Dai Li's holding cells where they intended to interrogate me for information on project Sundown." She said clearly and slowly.

"Rodger, this is General Garu of the United Forces fifth Wing, we will be deploying paratroopers, ETA thirty minutes, hold on till then." He replied. "And then we can give these royals a good taste of their own medicine the provisional government approved the use of Project Sundown Ma'm." He reported incidentally before the radio cut out. Asami could not have looked more afraid if she had tried.

Zaheer's command car raced up the front of the formation even after the car at their left flank was demolished by a lobbed rock. At the fore Ghazan upended trellises one after the other with his earthbending and launched them back at his attackers. Ming-Hua gave a small vicious cackle as royal earthbenders flew from their battlements propelled by high velocity garden fixtures.

Finally they reached the big sturdy doors at the base of the palace. Without slowing down Ghazan slammed the doors open and the cars plowed through more than a few lower rung officials, breaking them over its cow-catcher. Small detachments broke off and chased down other halls to secure the palace. They skidded to a halt in the throne room itself.

"Guards." The Queen scarpered for the nearest door until Ghazan melted it shut with a formidable display of lavabending. "Guards." She yelled again. Royal guards ran in through the un melted doors and Dai Li soldiers appeared from secret little spider holes in the high ceiling and the walls until they encircled them completely.

"Ready." Zaheer asked as he looked to Ghazan and Ming-Hua.

"Ready." They both responded.

Ghazan sunk a few enemy soldiers into lava straight away, in a single move they were charred corpses too quickly to even scream. He dodged earthen gloves and erected fortifications of stone to help provide his non-earthbending allies some measure of cover.

Ming-Hua pulled two barrels full of water from the boot of their satomobiles and formed herself four arms on either side with them. The razor thin tendrils snaked and twisted at odd angles, overlapping and coiling around eachother as if alive whilst they weaved almost independtly around the black arrows and struck down the Queen's men.

Zaheer ascended into the sky, evading and swatting down boulders and rock gloves with ease until he was arms reach from the ceiling. He held onto a glowstone chandelier and began raining down vicious blasts of air with his jet staff, intermittently repositioning to evade the rapidly dwindling defenders' forces.

Ming-Hua drowned the last man standing with a bubble of water just large enough to cling to his mouth and nose. His slowly fading eyes were uncovered as he dropped quivering to the floor.

"Shan, protect me." The Queen commanded desperately as she attempted to keep one of the last standing support pillars between her and her execution squad. She pushed her beleaguered Secretariat out in front of one of the most fearsome terrorist groups in world history. He was surprisingly calm about it, all things considered.

"You can handle this." Shan said as he walked straight through the heavily armed crowd. "I have to tend to Prince Wu's estate, in all the commotion I'm afraid he tripped and slashed his throat open." He announced with a venomous smile. "Oops." With that he pulled off his fine robe to reveal faded, tattered servants clothes with more than a few holes in them. He messed up his finely quaffed hair and turned back around with an obviously false limp as if wounded. "I'll see you soon, you can even come to my inauguration rally if you like." He declared with a much deeper voice before he 'hobbled' out the front gates.

"That traitor." Hou-Ting yelled, screeched almost. "I'll have his job. I'll have his head." She ranted. Ghazan drew up a pile of earth up to her neck to hold her in a vice like grip. "Or not." She said, attempting a disarming smile with her low, miserable mouth.

"Shame the kid couldn't be here to see this." Ghazan said plainly as he stepped over a bent and battered corpse of his own making.

"I move a lot faster than you think old man." Kai teased as he appeared in the corridor behind them. He was half covered in blood and he had a wild, adrenaline-high smile on his face.

"Kai, since you made it here so quickly, I believe the honour is all yours." Zaheer said calmly as he passed his gaze between the royal and the rebel.

"Thanks Zee." He said casually as he strolled up to look the captured monarch in the face. "But the thing is we believe in individual choice and you've wronged a lot of us." He said, pointing to the angry eager faces of other Black Arrows. "So what do you say, fellas how do we get rid of her?" He yelled; his proud pantomime voice filled the chamber.

"Decapitation." Yelled one. "Hanging." Yelled another. "Suffocation." Suggested Kuon.

"No." The Earth Queen repeated incessantly between sobs.

"Excellent suggestions my brothers and sisters." Kai announced. "But I think Kuon has a winner." He said, the old showman in him bubbling to the fore.

Kai began to gather the air into a huge ball at least as wide as he was tall. "Why don't you take a deep breath." And then everything went mad. He began to pull the breath out of her lungs and whirled it around her head. Tears of agony welled up in her eyes and flew off her face in the miniature maelstrom, pained desperate eyes that searched for any receptive ones in the room and found only Comet's.

With pleading, tear strewn eyes the dying Queen begged Comet silently for help amidst the crowd of cheering freedom fighters. With one last surge of air there was horrible, muffled bursting noise. Blood welled up out her limp lifeless mouth.

Kai watched the dead queen's head lull forward, her natty grey hair covering a lifeless face and cracked a small, empty smile.

"They killed her." Asami said stunned, grabbing Comet by the arm.

"I know." Comet said blankly as the older tycoon shook her for her attention.

"We have to get out of here right now!" Ryu yelled as he ran inside, for once with some measure of energy in his voice. "Unalaq's here!" He shouted. "Unalaq's here and he bought every spirit he could find." He explained.

At about that time the signature thrum of UnaVatuu's spirit beam thrummed high above them. Wherever it happened they could feel the mighty crash of an airship coming to ground and the resulting explosion as its fuel and ammunition erupted into flames.

"Everybody out, we're going straight back to base." Zaheer explained.

"We're leaving. Now." Asami hissed into Comet's ears as the group made their way out in a hurry. Zaheer abandoned car one rather than try to manoeuvre the thing back out, they had lost at least thirty cars worth of men in the assault, there wasn't much need for a loud old hot rod. "There's our chance." She declared. As a hurried stream of rebels poured out they were forgotten until they were the last in the Earth Queen's chamber.

Asami quickly picked up the Earth Queen's headdress and stuffed whatever gold and finery she could find before piling it into the back of the car for safe passage.

Comet got into the passenger seat without thinking and buckled herself in whilst Asami neglected to and instead turned the ignition straight away.

The cars had gone from the corridor at least and she had a straight shot to the outside. Asami raced out of the palace gates, nearly colliding with half a war-coin. She slalomed around debris and bodies wherever she was able but the wet crunch of bone as they went over a body came up at a quick, irregular rhythm. Zaheer and his men were already heading towards their spider hole towards the southern wall when they spotted car one streaking off to the Eastern Gate.

Up above a giant semi human figure of living darkness and streaked with blood red markings stepped straight over the precious walls of Ba Sing Se. Blistering beams of purple energy swatted airships and biplanes out of the air one by one. Meanwhile a living miasma of spirits both colossal shadows and tiny specks surged around him like living hate, dragging craft the ground or cutting them apart with spirit beams of their own. Nearly the entire fleet on both sides was crashing and burning now. A small frigate in proud united forces livery fell to earth with its largest fin not two feet from their car.

"All things end. And today this city falls." Unalaq and Vatu said in unison as it maliciously trampled down the golden roofs of the upper ring.

As they raced out of the palace grounds they could see that the upper ring was on fire, so brightly it almost looked like the daylight hour. The Flying Boars, United Forces paratroopers had parachuted in and began lowering sections of the wall all the way from here to the now piecemeal outer wall. The conflagration of all the bending elements as well as so much military hardware had set the city aflame long before the spirits came. Now each street was a battle between different sides. Rioting citizens, Earth Kingdom soldiers, the United Forces and their allies and now the spirits each faced off against one another in different bloodthirsty battles .

Asami weaved around spirits and soldiers of all stripes until they could reach safety.

"Shouldn't we try to get to a Republic squad or something." Comet yelled as she held onto the car's interior grips tightly.

"Assuming they won't kill anything without a U.F uniform the whole city isn't safe." Asami yelled. "We're going to drive this thing out of Ba Sing Se and as far as we can go." She yelled over the wind ruching past her face and the clamour of battle all around her.

The muddy, confined streets of the lower ring forced them to a relative crawl as they pushed through the unpaved district. Civillians ran past them, a large many tried to get on the car even as it was streaming past at fifteen miles per hour. Half the lower ring had already been flattened by smaller spirit raids and now whatever was left was being flattened in the crossfire.

"Warning." Genral Garu declared over the static laced radio. "Traitor –board activated –ndown, if you can hear this ru-"As they neared the outer rings the amber firelight of the burning city was snuffed out by a bright purple sphere of energy from high in the sky. It was slightly paler than regular spirit beams and its surface quaked and quivered like the sun's corona. It expanded to swallow what was left of the battling airfleets as well as much of Unalaq's spirit army and almost the entire city up to the middle ring.

When the blast receded Unalaq's gargantuan form was stood weakened and 'leaking' reddish lightning from glowing tears all across his body that arced into the ground. On his barely human face he had a battered smile.

"Oh no. Damn it no!" Asami yelled as she risked a crash looking over her shoulder. In her eyes Comet observed more fear than she had ever thought possible even after so many closely spaced brushes with death and danger.

"What is it." Comet asked but she could already guess.

Asami answered her with a mighty gulp. "Project sundown."


	12. Chapter 12: The Sands of Memory

Akir woke up and groggily rubbed his eye and put his feet to the ground. He hid his shame under an old white rag and then drew his long, bedraggled hair over that until all that could be seen of his face was a single, shadowed eye. He walked past his family's branch and out into the main square of the clan estate. Far beneath a soft iridescent canopy made from the wings of a giant rhinoceros beetle the heat of the Si Wong Desert was reduced to a dry comfortable warmth, kept light and breezy by specially carved ventilation tubes all around the estate. Across the square uncle Daz's branch of the family was just waking up as well.

Cousin Zeenat was kind enough, she tried to walk him through the earthbending forms Daz had showed her but he just couldn't keep up with her. Cousin Aban was a different story. He was bigger and stronger than all the other children, and he knew it.

"Ugh." Aban said, making a big show of his disgust as he saw Akir in the shadow of an awning. "You do know that back in ancient times we would have left cripples like you to the buzzard wasps." He prodded, looming over Akir and Zeenat as they looked over an old scroll.

Mother and Father both watched him with cold, impassive eyes from their corridor.

"Of course I know, I actually read." Akir said, with a bit of borrowed confidence.

Aban went to punch out Akir's other eye when he saw the layers of beads and curtains over Chief Karam's chambers begin to stir. Instead he used his words. "You know my father said once that the only reason they kept you is because your mother couldn't have anymore."

"Watch your mouth boy." Father finally said as he marched out into the square as well. He was broad and tall, seeming taller still with his beetle helm on tight. "You apologise to your Aunt Sabah right away." He said, lifting Aban off his feet by the scruff of his collar.

Akir's eye snapped open a lifetime later. They were all dead and he was dying. His lungs burned as he instinctively gulped down a breath. He was staring up at a dark metal ceiling with the cold light of a glowstone over his head. Blurry, indistinct faces looked over at him before his eye shut again.

"We've got him back, keep going Zhu." Narada commanded as he did his level best with a glowing blob of healing water. Zhu-Rong placed his fingers over Akir's chest, one slightly to the left of his heart and one to the right. He took a deep breath and bent a small portion of lightning across Akir's fading heart. Another bolt surged through him and he took another breath.

Akir's lips crinkled into a little smile. "I know you." He murmured, with his eye still closed.

Akir was, again, mucking out the Rhinoceros beetle stables. The beetles were all gone, the rest of the clan had gone out on a merchant expedition, even the Chief. It was near the surface, where the hot, dry air of the great Si Wong desert itself filled the chambers and did nothing to help the smell of the yellowish white excrement caked into the straw that covered the stable floors.

"Ugh." An old man's voice said from the outside. "The last time I came here we at least had Appa. And cactus juice." Rounding the corner Akir dropped his cleaning gear, a rusted bucketful of old stingy water splashed at his feet. He carried a thick cane of rosewood and arctic stagbear though he barely seemed to need it as he walked into the stables, unfazed by the smell.

"Hello, I'm-" The old man went say before Akir ran up to him.

"I know you." He squealed. "You're Chief Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe. I've read all about you and your adventures. Saviour of the Earth Kingdom, Father of Modern Electricity." He cooed. "I've read all of your books."

"I think you've got a fan." Said a beautiful young woman in green and white angular robes, her hair was long and glossy black with a few grey streaks in it and her hair bound in beautiful silver rings. "I'm Xulin Jitesh of the new city of Zaofu." She said kneeling down until she was Akir's height, she didn't seem to mind the dry, powdery beetle dung sticking to her loose grey trousers when she looked at him. "What's your name."

"My name is Akir, son of Hadash." He answered, awed. "I'm sorry, if you came here looking for a mount, my family is away on an expedition." He explained politely and quietly with his head bowed. "But they'll be back in a day or two, you could wait here if you want."

"They left you behind?" Sokka asked, leaning over his cane to look at the little boy.

Akir nodded and pulled back his hair to reveal the rag that covered his non eye. "The other clans think I'm a bad omen." He explained, ashamed.

"The next clan over's at least four days away on foot, if you really don't mind us staying here." Xulin said slowly, looking up to Sokka with a slight nod.

Akir's family quarters were always somewhat desolate, a family wing with ten bedrooms and only he and his parents to fill them. He walked them into his chambers. A small, low bed and a chair in the corner were his only furnishings aside from books and books and more books stacked as high as he was tall was an end table holding an old camera and a lamp. Judging by the characters on their spine some were children's novels, old and well read, others were the great epics, The King Of Omashu, The Dragon's Bride, Ten Thousand Monks, and so on, gathered from all the corners of the world. The majority, however were textbooks, oddly enough, ranging from children's arithmetic to a university textbook on pre-industrial Fire-Nation society. And bound in seal skin was Sokka's text "Tribal Government, In Industrial Society" a rather dry book that even he hated reading, yet Akir treated it fondly.

"Sorry about the mess." He said nervously. "It's visiting season so I haven't really had the time to put these with the others." He said, gesturing to the almighty mountains of literature.

"So. Akir, what do you do here, when your family's gone?" Xulin asked politely as she squeezed through the vertical pile of a twenty-four volume encyclopaedia and a tower of cartography books. She sat beside him on his slightly scratchy bed.

"I read, I clean up, sometimes I play Pai-Sho against myself." He said quietly.

"So what do you want to be when you grow up." Sokka asked, as he lowered himself onto the rickety wooden chair.

"Well I actually wanted to be a White Lotus like you." He said eagerly. "And I know you must get this a lot but could I get a photo with you two." He said running over to his camera. Which he pointed at the two of them. "I bought this to take pictures of the desert when I can sneak out, but I think this is going to be even better." He concluded before he set the timer to a minute and ran back over to them. He swept his hair over in front of his patch just in time for the flash.

On the deck of the airship Akir tensed as another small bolt of Zhu-Rong's lightning ripped through his chest in an attempt to keep his heart going. "We need to intubate him, Nehal I need you to bend his breath very delicately." Narada commanded. Akir lapsed back into unconsciousness.

The nearest White Lotus outpost was another one of the merchant clan's estates though it was of a newer, far more ostentatious design than Akir's family home. It was perhaps ten times the size of their home with four family palaces every level down until you reached bizarre novelty rooms like an underground garden of luminescent plants and a lake full of eyeless cave fish. Some two hundred members were boarded there in relative comfort for such an oppressively hot bowl of sand.

The noise of a brand new airship coming in from overhead filled the upper quarters until the engine eventually throttled down and stopped. It was massive, the largest in the Lotus fleet and bedecked in their customary white and indigo blue livery with golden detail work all over it. First out was a few of the Earth Kingdom's more notable Lotus members, each of them bearing a few new apprentices. Some came from nobility, some came from the streets but they were each clad in their initiates uniforms already. Next came Chief Sokka, as ever grumbling something about the heat and sweating profusely. After him was Xulin, apparently unfazed by the heat at this point and stood between them was a new initiate. She was water tribe and she handled the heat exactly as well as someone who lived in a snowy tundra all their lives naturally would. Deep brown hair the length of her thighs curled over one shoulder.

The Hanapin finally pulled in to land, somewhat heavily. "Hey, be careful up there, Hiro!" Nehal yelled as the whole passenger hold rocked. The ramp came down revealing Seiko and an assembly of the soldiers lucky enough to be left on guard duty as well as the base's medics, garbed in crisp white and blue uniforms. Almost immediately refugees piled off of the airship around Akir and his entourage. In response the assembled soldiers began barking orders to stand still.

"Stand down, stand down!" Seiko shouted as she made her way to the front of the welling mass of troops. "Tell Kei-Shek to stand….every…" Seiko stopped mid-sentence as the crowd cleared enough to get a peek at Akir, laying injured on the airship's deck. "Someone get Doctor Burza here right now, and call for a stretcher." She commanded. "What happened to Kei-Shek, where are the soldiers?"

"Kei-Shek's dead." Hiro reported as he jumped out of the cockpit door. "We were overweight and the spirits were closing in. He led the men on a charge back out so we could lift off." Hiro said, for once with an air of solemnity.

"Akir fought off a spirit for us. It cost him." Nagant reported bluntly.

Burza and her nurses arrived promptly and shifted Akir onto their stretcher. For a moment Akir's eye fluttered open as the smell of Seiko's perfume managed to reach through the odour of his own burns. "What happened to your hair?" He groaned, and then passed out.

What had been Councilman Tenzin's dining room was now a medical chamber, about the only clean and well-appointed part of the island anymore. The many stainless steel surgical implements sat resplendent in their cases and surprisingly underused. The spirits didn't often deal in flesh wounds.

"Any non-medical personnel are going to have to wait out here." The nurse said. "Even you ma'am." he said with some hesitance.

Narada followed them in, with his hands still pressing the cold blue glow of healing water into Akir's chest.

He was cut out of his black and red robes on the operating table revealing his bare, bony chest. Lightning burns formed out of burst capillaries snaked up one arm across his chest and out the other with smaller burns branching off from it. One of the nurses inserted a tube down his throat whilst another attached a heartbeat monitor and still a third inserted an I.V. drip.

"He should be dead from wounds this severe." Burza reported as she listened to the irregular, acoustic thump of his nearly non-existent heartbeat on one of their machines.

"Our firebender used micro lightning to defibrillate him immediately and he's been receiving aerokinetic intubation." Narada said. They just looked back at the eight bearded vagrant medic with a slightly wry look of surprise. "Narada, Healer for the Red Monsoons." He said, extending a grubby hand in weatherbeaten combat gear.

Doctor Burza held up her hands in bright white medical gloves. "You might want to go clean up, we can take care of it from here."

"I don't think any of you are healers, and let me tell you I've looked after guys in worse conditions than this." Narada replied defensively before he got back to administering his healing energy.

Republic city was beautiful in the morning. Akir had decided, from the university's metallurgy lab. The way all that glass shone as the sun came up over the mountains just seemed so much more hopeful than the washed out, baking light of the Si Wong Desert. As he wiped the soot from his ash-blacked face he looked over the wavy striations in the small silvery piece of purified platinum. He yanked off his old leather patch and tossed in with the rest of the rubbish.

"Seems a bit uncomfortable." Xulin observed as she peered over his shoulders at the glowing hot little piece of metal. "Besides platinum's way too flimsy , it'll be bent out of shape in a month."

"Not so, this guy at my work experience says Sato Industries has figured out a way to create a much harder isotope of platinum, and after that I spent a bit recreating it." He explained quickly.

"All decked out for your graduation, I assume." She asked as she looked at the little eyepiece and not-so-subtly attempted to manipulate the unbendable metal. "Even when we're both doctors I won't be extending any professional courtesy when it comes to pai-sho, you know."

"Something like that. If people are going to stare I might as well give them something cool to look at." Akir answered as he dipped the little metal eyepiece in a bowl of quenching oil. "Besides Seiko's going to be there so you know…."

"Am I watching the good Doctor Akir blush?" She teased with a small, hoarse laugh. "Where are you going to go after that?" She asked she gingerly tested the piece of platinum for heat and dropped the somewhat hot piece of metal. "According to Seiko you inherited your old home."

"Oh please, Xu-Xu, we both know that you go all jelly kneed every time Master Matsu looks at you." Akir answered back as he unwound a length of rich blue silk purchased from the southern water tribe, a nation known for its taste in blue. His voice grew about as deep and menacing as a sixteen year old could get. "And yes, I'll be going back to the desert to see to….family affairs for a while. After that I'll go down to the Piandao to practice."

As the medical team injected him with a cocktail of heart medicines, pain killers and sedatives a wide, lipless almost evil smile dominated his face. "Looks like someone's enjoying their painkillers." Narada quipped to a completely unimpressed Burza and her staff.

Akir was smiling. He had been smiling at graduation, he had been smiling at the lawyer's office, he had been smiling at the Aerodrome and he had been smiling on the airship for a day and a night now, possibly even in his sleep. The scorching sun of the Si Wong took its toll on his grin for a moment as the old memories of that all-permeating heat and the invasive sand came back to him at once. He stepped into the sifting ocean of silicates and into the main entrance to the homestead. Behind him a few other White Lotus members and their legal experts stepped out after him.

They descended down the hot sandstone steps and slowly the cut rock of the desert grew higher and higher until they were under ground. The chill breeze of numerous air-conditioning systems blew back on him and rusty candle sconces sat empty, replaced instead by warm amber lightbulbs. For the sake of nostalgia he checked the Beetle pens. Instead of the many proud, colossal insects he remembered in his youth there was a single, obviously used jeep.

Stood at the entrance to the estate proper was Aban. He was a full-fledged man now, with a wife and children peeking from behind his legs. He had grown a full, proud beard that rather much exceeded Akir's patchy, acne marred stubble. Some of the other branches of the family were assembled as well, the small, barely noticeable branches that were unlikely to ever have any sway over the homestead anyway.

"Cousin." Aban said, hazarding to put his hand out in the space between them. Akir simply glared at the hand and then looked back to Aban. "You didn't return home for the funerals, important business, I presume." Aban tried again.

"Not really." Akir crossed his arms.

"I suppose you're here to start up the business again." Aban pulled a small scroll from his trouser pocket. "I sold off most of our extraneous assets and Zeenat asked her husband's family to support a small investment but I was hoping your Lotus friends could help us out."

"Actually I am involving the Order." Akir replied as he pulled out his own stack of papers, bound with a bit of leftover silk from his new eyepatch. "This is an eviction notice; I'm selling the place to the White Lotus."

"You can't do that." Aban's wife commented.

Akir looked at her with a slight scowl and then looked back to Aban. "I can do that. Aban, you might be older than me, but my father was the firstborn and that makes me the inheritor." He explained dully with a slightly pompous air about him. "The Lotus' personnel will be here in exactly one month, you can either move on or try to work something out with the new Seneschal, maybe you can be a janitor or something."

"Listen you-" Aban grabbed Akir by the mantle of his uniform. Akir sideswiped him in the ribs with a load of stone plucked from out of the walls.

"No, you listen Aban." Akir whirled out of Aban's grip. "I'm not a little kid and you don't scare me anymore. I'm not interested in dragging you or this dusty old pit around for the rest of my life." Akir said before he turned around and left.

"You're just a bitter little man you know." Aban yelled as he held onto his wife. "And one day you will regret this." He threatened idly.

Seiko had hardly been able to find time to worry about Akir. Between her, Hiro and Nagant they were struggling to find a place for all of the Blue Spirit's refugees as well as reorganising patrol rotations after the loss of so many soldiers. Kei-Shek's chair was bigger than she imagined and horribly uncomfortable both metaphorically and literally. "He's stable." Burza announced as she walked up to the planning table. "We'e put him into a medical coma to recover but his outlook is optimistic."

"Good, I'm sure there are a lot of other patients to look into." Nagant interjected. "Some of my people were medical personnel, I'm sure you could persuade them to help." She nodded with some hesitation and then left again.

On the grounds of the Piandao Institute the White Lotus' sentries in training and a few members of the Southern Militia were gathered around a practice circle. A whirling blizzard gave way to a screaming figure leaping out of the snow. It was Sokka, grey haired, heavily wrinkled and presently hefting a two handed training sword as if it were nothing. He locked blades with Akir and nearly pressed him backwards into the snow. "Put your back into it! I'm an old man I shouldn't be able to shift you like that." Sokka commanded as he swung his training sword a hair's breadth from Akir's face.

"Just letting you feel young for a moment, old man." Akir responded with a dry little grin before he parried and went in for a thrusting jab.

"That's chief old man to you." He answered before he managed a heavy strike to Akir's shoulder. Even under his parka and his training armour he could tell he would have a bruise waiting for him in the morning. Akir dropped the sword and slumped into a weakened stance. "Are you ready to surrender yet?"

"Nope." Akir pulled the metal in the training sword's hilt into his hand and landed a hit on the red disk over Sokka's heart.

"Fighting dirty, eh?" Sokka asked. "You might be a swordsman yet." Sokka answered as he pulled off his protective headgear.

"Did you hear, whilst you were gone Grand Master Matsu found the new Avatar." Sokka said as they walked over to the training racks. "General Tonraq's daughter, we're living in the Korra Era now."

"Perhaps she'll need someone to teach her swordfighting, you know." Akir answered.

"Why don't you wait until you pass your final demonstration." Sokka chuckled. "By the way, you know how Fire Lord Zuko and my nephew Tenzin are going to be here for Korra's birthday?" Akir nodded. "Well I nvited them to watch the demonstration. Zuko especially said he wanted to see the test matches."

"No pressure, then." Akir quipped. "I think I'm going to go visit Master Katara, your last swing was pretty tough." Akir said, wincing as he pulled his padding off.

The trainee barracks of the institute were cold and windy enough that even the layer of furs and thick bedding wasn't quite enough to stop Akir shivering in his sleep. At around midnight on a groggy trip to the bathroom he heard the sound of shouting and ice shattering somewhere outside. He ran back to his room when a wall of lava burnt through the thick winter wood of the barracks which began to burst into flame.

He pulled on as much of his winter gear as he could before the smoke and crackling heat of the fire forced him out of the room. In the hallways other intiates were running around in fear whilst the senior students attempted to get them under control and out of the burning building.

Akir was amongst the first to make it out into the cold, bleak chill of the polar night. High above them a full moon's light was nearly swallowed up by the whirling storm. In the murk the bright flashes of Zuko's flame punctured the darkness. The thunderous sound of ice exploding filled the air. After about five minutes huddled in a snowbank they heard Master Tenzin yelling for help.

"We need a healer, Master Sokka's injured." He yelled towards the burning barracks.

Akir and a few of the students ran across the tundra to render assistance. In the near blizzard strength storm their whale oil lanterns were barely enough to illuminate more than ten yards ahead of them. When they came upon the aftermath of battle Akir dropped his own lantern into the snow.

A giant woman with a third eye on her face, another with no arms at all and a long haired man tattooed like a circus freak were unconscious in the snow whilst chief Tonraq wrestled with a shaven haired man as he tried to lock his hands together with a pair of ice shackles. The Firelord had a nasty slash wound across his chest and was panting little puffs of fire in the snow. Tenzin was knelt down in the snow, holding onto Sokka, periodically blowing snow out of his face. He was wounded, severely, he had the tip of a spear broken off in his chest about an inch below his heart. His sword sat a foot away from him with its glossy black blade shattered into half a dozen pieces.

One healer ran over to them and began trying to work some healing water into this wound.

"There's not much your crazy magic spirit water can do now." Sokka rasped as he weakly batted the medic's arm away. "Tenzin, tell Katara I love her and she probably doesn't have to fix my boots." He said, finishing out his last breath with a gurgling laugh. "Not like I'm walking anywhere." He whispered and looked up into the pale moonlight above him

When Akir returned to republic city it was the winter, again. The problem with regularly crossing the equator for his summer holidays was that he instead had two winters to contend with. The snow had gathered around his misty window and the hot dry air of his fire place mixed with the crisp clear air of outside through a slightly opened window. "Package for you." A deliverywoman said, knocking on the door of Akir's office.

"Come in." Akir grunted as he looked over a rather dry treatise on the life of a pre Earth-Kingdom Avatar unearthed on the outskirts of Omashu.

"Postage from Councilman Tenzin, someone must be doing well." She answered as she put it down on a table not occupied by open textbooks and scientific equipment. It rattled metallically as she put it down. "I swear it was making that noise when they handed it to me."

"Thank you." He said, floating a pile of yuans into her hand, rather than get up to pay her. "Please leave."

He looked at the package. It was wrapped in piece of tanned leather tied up with twine with a little postage tag hanging off of the knot. He unwrapped it to reveal a long, low rosewood case with a glossy, rounded upper lid. Its latches were embossed with gold filigree in the shape of a lotus. Opening it he found Chief Sokka's sword, still broken into rattling shards. Inside was an envelope embossed with a grey wax symbol of the Air Nomads. Akir opened it with the broken off tip of the sword.

Inside was that picture Akir had taken so long ago. It was bent at the edges and the sun had faded it somewhat over the years. Behind it was a note. Akir recognised the flourished, elegant calligraphy as Counciman Tenzin's.

"_Dear Akir, as I'm sure you know my uncle never had any children. When he died his belongings passed on to my mother. I found this photo of you and him in his study and according to your teachers you are a skilled swordsman and blacksmith. If you believe you are worthy I'm sure Chief Sokka would be pleased to see his sword reforged and used again. May it serve you faithfully, Best wishes Councilman Tenzin." _

Akir tucked the photo into the pocket of his robe with a small smile and immediately made his way down to the Metalurgy labs with a design already in his head.

The sound of a dozen airships passing by jolted Akir awake. When he opened his eye it was as dark as ever, though now a heavy storm had rolled in pelting the Temple grounds with ice cold rain. Akir flopped out of the bed, dressed in only a medical gown. He grabbed hold of a table and fumbled his way off the floor. By the time he was standing he could feel a vice crushing against his heart as he flopped against the table to support himself. He pulled on his eyepatch and found his sword resting in its scabbard on the table. He wandered out into the hallway yelling and calling for attention until he was downstairs in the control centre.

"You can wave all the papers you want, Moksha, I'm-" Seiko bellowed. In the time since Akir had last seen her she had grown a peach like fuzz around her head. She was scowling slightly at a man in United Forces red and a heavy officer's greatcoat emblazoned with a General's insignia. "Akir?" She gasped as she heard him hobbling down the stairs.

"Comatose indeed." He muttered. "Just the man I need to see." He said, striding across the room with a sealed scroll in hand. Akir looked at it dumbly for a moment before the General tutted in exasperation. "Under the Constitution of Martial Law Article Twelve I am conscripting you into scientific service."

"Why?" He groaned, sorely.

"Project Sundown was activated over Ba Sing Se." He declared direly. "War is afoot."


	13. Chapter 13: The Transformation

Airship carcasses were raining out of the sky and into lower ring slums as Asami and Comet reached the outermost walls of Ba Sing Se. United Forces earthbenders had bought huge sections of the wall down until it resembled a jagged bear-trap around the doomed city. The ground around the walls was upturned and jagged, clearly eartbenders on both sides had been fighting in great numbers as attested by far too many bodies strewn about the ground, not all of them in uniform.

Comet hazarded a look behind her. Unalaq was still there, still horribly real. In huge, surprisingly fast steps the lumbering construct stamped across the ground. As he walked the crackling red spirit energy slipping out of his colossal body arced carelessly into comparatively insignificant buildings and set them ablaze in an instant. Spirts rained out of the sky above him and rolled over the area like a vicious fog. Every now again he would stop and produce these awful bolts of brilliant purple energy, bright enough to light up the afternoon darkness for a moment and blast apart whole neighbourhoods. And he was slowly walking towards them.

As they passed through a sky-bison sized hole in the once great wall of the supposedly impenetrable city they saw the last of the routed airfleet cut down in its retreat. They were out of the city at last. Stretched before them was a shadowy, most likely spirit infested wilderness stretching on as far as their satomobile's meagre headlights could illuminate and miles further. All around them the abandoned, weatherworn ruins of the Ba Sing Se suburbs lined sad, forgotten streets. Dust and ash from the Sundown explosion began to fall on them like snow, even at this distance.

"Comet, put the roof up." Asami demanded in an empty, even voice between coughs as the ash started to stick into her hair and clothes. She barely blinked despite the outpouring of debris and stared straight ahead at the murky grey blizzard. With an audible 'thwump' the roof released, shutting out the worst of the ash, though it still wafted in gently as little motes of dust caught in shafts of light from Asami's instrument panels and the little interior lights in the car.

"How far can we get in this thing?" Comet asked, peering across to Asami's side of the dashboard. The fuel gauge read three quarters empty. Between today's charge on the palace and the journey out of the entirety of Ba Sing Se it seemed almost miraculous that they had any fuel left in either the standard tank or the sloshing barrels in the trunk.

"I suppose I might as well tell you about project Sundown now." Asami said with a sigh. Comet hoped it was unrelated to their fuel situation. She barely blinked as the United Forces Dreadnought _Lung-Rho 8 _came out of the sky a hundred metres to the east. "It was eight years ago. The last Republic territory, the city of Yu Dao had just fallen. At the Eastern Air Temple President Reiko put together a research group to find a way to win the war at any cost." Comet watched the pensive look on Asami's face grow and grow. "Myself, My father, Science Commander Akir and Varick were gathered."

"What happened." Comet asked gently.

"It was Varick who first thought of using the Spirit Vines as a power source. We were going to revolutionise modern science." Asami's eyes grew more proud, almost teary with nostalgia. "Every day we found new uses for the vines; power plants that could power entire nations, weapons that could kill a greater spirit in a single shot." Asami's face scrunched up into a little sneer as she hunched over the steering wheel. "Then we discovered a way to make it into a bomb."

"What's wrong with that? If that bomb had been dropped over the Northern Water Tribe we could have destroyed half of the spirits in the world." Comet replied.

"Akir and I came to believe that using the Vine Bomb would cause a chain reaction in the spirit vines around the world. Akir believed that if the reaction reached the tree of time all of reality might be destroyed." Asami explained, her voice grew heavy with solemnity. "By the time we discovered it the schematics for a prototype weapon had already been created. And it looks like someone threw together a working model."

Comet digested the news that the world could end a second time. She gulped heavily and then spoke in a wavering uncomfortable voice. "What do we do?"

"We have to make contact with the United Republic and find out what happened." Asami answered honestly, there was no certainty in her voice. Only a tired growl.

It was half a hundred miles later that the satomobile finally sputtered out and died. The clouds of ash had mostly settled by then. It blanketed the land so deep in ash and debris that the satomobile's trusty cowcatcher could scarcely clear enough debris for them to move for the last ten miles. They staggered out into thigh high ash and lung rattling dust. As far as they could see it was just ruin after ruin right until they could see no further. Asami tied a rag over her mouth and handed one to Comet.

"Do you know where we're going?" Comet asked, forever trying to keep the grit out her eyes.

"This road leads from Zaofu to Ba Sing Se, that means villages and outposts, eventually we'll reach one the scavengers haven't picked over." Asami answered as she pushed herself through the ash, more through force of will than the strength of her legs.

They were through the land of ash and stuck in a world of pain. That was all Comet could think about now. Her head was pounding, her throat was as dry as desert sand and every movement of her legs felt like it would pull the meat off her bones.

"Come on Comet." Asami pointed to an old metal sign, so rusted and faded away that it was mostly illegible. "Theres a village near." Asami whispered, every bit as exhausted as Comet. Perhaps moreso, none the less she took the time to help support the taller young woman on her shoulder as they walked the dark and lonely trail. One foot just barely moved in front of the other now as she and Asami attempted to shuffle up one last hill. The spirits that had danced over the city were beginning to disperse. Some of them were coming their way. Asami looked just as pained but much more driven, forcing herself on with a defiant sneer, she wouldn't die out here.

"Asami." Comet blurted as if she were pushing the words up and out of herself. "I-I can't go on." She said, salt-heavy tears tracking down her grubby cheeks. Her legs began to give from under her and she tried to slip out of Asami's grip.

Thin fingers gripped into the scruff of her coat as harsh as bird talons. "Yes, you can." Asami snapped. "You've come too far, we've come too far to give up now." She commanded.

Comet couldn't find an answer but she found the strength to keep walking.

The town of Na Wen lay before them, or at least what remained of it. It had seen battle before as attested by jagged patches of upturned earth as well as heavy stone disks lodged in the ground. And, of course sad skeletons in the ragged remnants of Earth Kingdom uniforms, or no uniforms at all. The air around the town was entirely still. No animal life, no machinery, nothing, as if the whole area had been waiting for someone to come back to it. The first building not destroyed was a small hut with a hole in the roof. There were other houses down the road, far grander in their own rotten way but this hut would have to do. The final agonising steps up the porch and into the house passed quickly enough and within a heartbeat Comet and Asami were flopped on a pair of dirty sofas that smelt of age and puffed dust out of the cushions when they shifted their weight.

It took a surprising time for Comet to get to sleep. The sight and sound of flaming airships and purple explosions were enough to keep her awake for some time into the night.

Asami woke up as hungry and thirsty as she had ever been. A brief inspection of the dilapidated kitchen confirmed an absence of drinkable water, or food or anything besides an old photograph of a teenage boy in a Ba Sing Se University student's robe. She huffed, dejected and then went to a broken window to inspect the situation outside. There was an inky black mass of a spirit it had too many arms and too many tentacles. Behind it was a mass of spirits, swirling and writhing as one chaotic mass that swept across the land. The many-limbed spirit approached. Asami ducked and whispered a desperate little hope that she wouldn't be seen.

"Comet! Comet!" Asami yelled as she scrabbled over to the decrepit furniture Comet had fallen asleep on. After a vigorous shaking Comet was more or less awake.

"Oh what now?" Comet huffed as she pulled herself up. The irritation in her voice let way to a startled gasp as she saw the twinkling many coloured lights of the spirits swirling the murky distance, in a gap between the wall panelling. And then the many limbed spirit, it was close. Dangerously close. "Spi-Spi-Spirits." She managed to splutter as she saw one of them up close. Fluttering like a ribbon in the tide it looked so much more unnatural than she imagined, twisting at odd angles as if it was some rigid mass snapping itself over and over again with every turn. It seemed at once fluid and solid, lighter than air and weighed down by an incredible mass, dotted with lights of every colour and drenched in tangible shadow so deep that it seemed to consume whatever light was around it. And then it opened its eyes, so many eyes, each of them shaped like those of a cuttlefish and lit with this bright golden energy that put out moving motes of light as they looked this way and that. The lights probed through the gaps in the rotten wood of the hut, slowly roving over the hut, closer and closer towards them.

Asami pulled Comet off the sofa, prone on the ground and then hid both of them underneath it. The light wandered over them, it lingered on the furniture for a moment, focussing its gaze on it for a moment. Every fearful breath, every creak of the floorboard the pounding of their hearts in their throats, it all felt too loud as the bright amber light filled the room like the most awful dawn of a new day. Eventually the light moved on.

"We have to get out of here." Asami muttered as she turned to crawl for the back porch.

"We should just hide." Comet answered back, grasping her at the calf. "It'll move on, right, it'll have to move on."

"It might, eventually." Asami conceded. "But we don't know how long that could be, there are spirits coming, hundreds and thousands of them, we've got to get ahead of them. Come on."

They crawled quickly for the back of the house. The rear door squeaked open. In the tense silence it was like cannon fire. Behind the hut was a barn and after that rows and rows of houses. They could just about see the last tailing tendrils of the many-limbed spirit circling around a house across the street. As they darted from house to house to house they were able to catch sight of the most beautiful sign in the world right now. 'Now Leaving Na Wen' It was situated at the base of a narrow path, flanked at either side by a dead forest.

"Two blocks and we're home free." Asami declared. And it was true, they were past the sign in a few frantic dashes. Comet hazarded to turn around at just at a bend in the path to get one last look at Na Wen. Many-Limbs turned to face them. It's glowing cuttlefish eyes narrowed like a predator's gaze. In a moment it rocketed towards them.

"Run!" Comet screamed, almost on instinct. She forced Asami forwards. Dead leaves crumbled into powder as they ran through black barked, dead trees. The forest might once have been beautiful, with lilies and flowers and red leaves. Now all that was left was rotted twigs and old thorns. The branches scratched and tore at them as they ran over little hillocks and patches of crumbling moss. They could only run in a pitch black forest for so long before something happened. Comet felt her toe collide with an unyielding little rock. She tumbled into a mess of dead leaves. The spirit approached pooling its dozens of eyes into one massive eye with a golden glow.

Comet heard the crunch of leaves under her hands and then it was all agony. She was blinded for a moment, screaming from the bottom of her lungs in the void as this white hot energy thrummed and kicked alive within the very core of her body, in the marrow of her bones. There was an immense pressure in her body as if her insides were about to force their way out. Asami could only watch in shock as Comet contorted in the throes of her transformation. Her bedraggled captain's coat grew more bedraggled as the right sleeve burst open as an extra arm grew out of her, and then the same happened on the left side, and inbetween sickly atrophied little limbs grew out of Comet like macabre tree branches. Her arms, her new arms, looked glossy and damp and dappled like a tropical fish along with much of of her body. In the affected areas of her body her skin took on a smokey black colour layered over with swathes whitish grey. Thick, writhing tentacles sprouted from her scalp just as quickly as her hair withered and fell out at the root. She felt her heart beating louder than the loudest drums and then she felt it stop.

And then it simply left her. It wiggled and rutted as if it were trying to shake something off of itself. It eyed Asami for a minute, twisting around like a dog cocking its head. Then it flew off, out and through the trees. Comet finally opened her eyes. One looked like it always did and the other was a black orb with a yellow iris and a horizontal slit for a pupil. The first thing she did was cry.

Zaheer returned to the crypt. The stars were visible through the constant shower of dust and rubble. And there were spirits, thousands of spirits floating far above them. Almost serenely aside from the airships on fire all around them. It took all of their earthbenders to keep larger chunks of earth from flattening their home. Even then they were down to six stupas. Then a light shone through the opening it was brighter than a summer's day, cold and clear and bright. It was accompanied by the heavy thrumming of a single engine airship. Zaheer knew who it was in an instant. Only one man would dare risk a spotlight with that many spirits around.

The airship descended slowly. It was single engine, with a tiny wooden gondola and a deep blue balloon. Beneath the cockpit a ramp opened up and out walked Unalaq himself, flanked by the biggest and meanest looking cultists either of them had ever seen. He carried himself with all the confidence one expected of the Dark Avatar. His cronies relied on bending and their bare fists but Unalaq carried a recreation of an ancient water tribe shaman's staff. It was carved from the rib of a dragon-whale and scrimshawed with black and blue etchings of his victories as well as characters symbolising faith and strength. From deeper within the airship Unalaq and his crew descended on a streak of water, sliding out of the sky to meet with Zaheer.

Unalaq studied his old ally Zaheer. He looked as if he had aged ten years in the past few hours. He had shaved his hair and his beard away to nothing but rough stubble. Behind him was the last surviving remnant of his group. Ghazan was there with a ragged cut along the top of his balding head and besides him was Ming-Hua. The rail thin waterbender's 'arms' had been smothered by the cloying dust and transformed from precise, crystal clear limbs to sloppy tentacles of muck that lolled loosely as she struggled to control the impure water.

"Thank you for all your help Zaheer." Unalaq declared with a quick, almost playful nod. "I'd still be living in my idiot brother's shadow if you hadn't led those barbarians all those years ago. To think I never could have done all of this without you." He declared mockingly, he didn't quite smile but he flashed his teeth like a snarling dog.

"I've done everything you've asked, now just give me P'li." Zaheer commanded, almost pleaded.

"Of course." Unalaq said with more menace than he had ever expressed in the whole altercation. He signalled one of his henchmen to open the rear of the airship and descended slowly, painfully slowly for Zaheer. Clad in a black robe a tall, thin figure draped in a filthy black cloak. The sound of shackles jingled in the near silent cavern as she approached. She was hobbled, stooped and shuffling, each step looked as if she were struggling to move forwards.

"Zaheer." A voice called, it was P'li. Just about. Finally Zaheer couldn't wait and broke his composure to run up to her. Every step he felt fear, fear of what was under the hood, with every pace he took he fought the urge to run away. His father told him this is what a marriage usually felt like. As he reached her the realisation struck him, but all the same he flicked the hood down. Were it not for that third eye still emblazoned proudly on her forehead she might not have been recognizable. To ward off lice her hair had been shaved down to almost nothing. Bone and sinew jutted under her wax-paper thin skin, left pale and tight over her malnourished frame. She looked exhausted and her face was slick with a cold sweat. But Unalaq had done more, quills sprouted all over her body and her skin had changed to a sickly ochre colour.

"P'li…" Zaheer breathed as he went to embrace her.

"Careful." Unalaq said with a dry, taunting voice. "They're poisonous." With that he left the broken remnants of the Red Lotus and departed for his airship.

"Zaheer, I tried to resist him. I wouldn't be his killing machine." P'Li answered, in a weak, shaking voice though she still found time for a yellow toothed smile.

. Unalaq turned back about on the ramp for a moment and yelled down to his former brothers and sisters in anarchy. "Was it worth it?!"

And Zaheer was silent. Empty and silent in the crypt of a forgotten king.


	14. Chapter 14: Flight of The Hanapin

On air temple island Moksha was still stood there, still presenting his conscription papers and growing rather irate, looking at the bleary eyed so-called-genius that was Akir. From the sneer on his face everything he could see offended him. The leaking roof, the dingy lighting, the tired, broken down soldiers. None of it was good enough.

"General Moksha I don't care what you wave in front of my face, I'm already in scientific service." Akir answered slowly, laboriously. "Can I have a chair please." He croaked, reaching a hand to the nearest seat, which happened to contain Hiro. He staggered to the chair as Hiro left it and sat down with a heavy thump. "And it would seem I'm not up to travelling right now anyway."

"You can't do this." Nagant declared, on instinct he touched a hand to his swords, sitting in their scabbards on the war table.

"You might want to take that hand away." Moksha chided, pointing to the dao's hilt. "You've been away from your duties a while Captain so I'll forgive your lack of diplomacy." He said an air of politeness so false it came straight back around to being insulting. "But threatening a superior officer is a hang-able offence…."

"General Iroh gave me full discretion over my mission, you can't just order me off of it." Akir protested weakly. He didn't even raise his head all the way to look at the big fat blustering general.

Moksha looked at him, slighted. He twitched one of his bushy white eyebrows and sneered at the small, weak string of a man. "This order comes from president Reiko himself, you can either come with me or you can be stripped of all rank, titles and finances and formally exiled from any United Republic Territory. Including the ground you're standing on."

"Military men." Nehal huffed. "It's just not good enough for you lot until we've got no choice but to lock step and get in line." There was a tense pause in the room for a moment. Even the admin staff paused in their paperwork and looked up at her.

"I wouldn't say so." Moksha countered. "And it's a good thing I wouldn't say so, because that's a really effective airship you've got. If I really wanted you to 'lock step and get in line' I could seize the _Hanapin_ with a standardised entry form."

Nehal sneered at him but remained silent for the time being; content to fume at him internally. Moksha spoke again. "Your medical condition is appreciated; you can work here whilst you recuperate." With that he turned on his feet and walked back out with his men, to the largest of the parked airships.

"What a fox-weasel." Nagant sighed, stood heavily over the war table as Kai-Shek might have done. He looked more like a United Forces officer should, with his hair neatly trimmed and groomed as well as a more rested appearance and a certain liveliness to his eyes.

In contrast Seiko looked as if she were just about able to keep her mantle from pulling her to the ground. Her glasses dug heavily into her broad nose which had reddened from a pronounced cold. Her glider-staff sat dejected in the corner. "Perhaps, but I'll be glad to let someone else take the lead here." She said tiredly, running a head over the five o' clock stubble on the top of her head. "Kei-Shek always made this look so easy."

"Speaking of Kei-Shek" Hiro began. "We left him behind, and twenty two men and women, so that we could get a weird bowl out of a defunct university. We owe it to them to see this through."

"That sounds an awful lot like treason, lieutenant." Seiko declared. "Nagant take Akir and Hiro, to my office, I'll be with you in a moment." She finished commandingly, very commandingly; Akir wondered why she didn't use that voice more often.

The three managed to get over their stunned silence and proceeded to the office, a few flights of stairs away on one of the upper floors. It had once been Master Tenzin's private study, a place of sanctity and meditation. When Kei-Shek moved in he filled it with his effects. Old novels, records, his officer's sabre and a few paintings. Then there were the photographs, and medals, ledgers, folders, notes, every last detail of his life just left behind as if he figured he would just walk back in here and get back to work. Seiko's stationary was her only customisation to the lived in little workspace, scrunched in unobtrusively amidst Kei-Shek's belongings.

"That little scribe's tough as nails, was she always that commanding?" Nagant asked as he helped lower Akir into a traditionally stiff air nomad chair. Kei-Shek kept them there just so guests would get out of his office quicker.

"No…she wasn't." Akir responded a tad flustered, and not just because he had gone up three flights of stairs with a weak heart. "Wouldn't mind it though."

The door opened a moment later to reveal Seiko and the rest of Akir's team. Zhu-Rong hadn't changed at all aside from finally putting on a sleeved shirt. Yana had changed into an assemblage of united forces gear, a drab melange of earthbender green and nonbender grey. She wore her paint mask as ever but she now wore the bright blue strip of silk Akir had given her as well. Her brow looked less furrowed, less pained and she stood with an easy confidence.

"Sorry, who are you?" Akir asked, pointing to a water tribe man with a lantern jaw and thickly muscled arms that strained against the cloth of his dark blue leather jacket.

"Don't you recognise me?" He said with an amused voice. "It's Narada, I just shaved now that we're back in civilisation…..such as it is."

"Yes, yes it's very fetching." Seiko said as she shut the door and settled uncertainly into her office chair. "As Hiro said we've….we've lost a lot of people getting this far." Seiko paused a moment. "But I've studied that bowl, all those texts you bought back from Xulin, there's a real chance we're going to discover something that could not just bring the day back but make sure the world never has to fear the spirits again. We aren't giving that up."

"You heard Moksha!" Akir sat up in protest. Then winced, then sat back into his chair. "If we defy his orders we'll be exiled, stripped of our assets, I'll be excommunicated, the United Forces might never stop hunting us."

"I'll do it." Nehal said a breath later. "Home was always in the sky anyway." She sounded uncertain, but she didn't change her mind.

"I do this for my home, whether I go back or not." Zhu-Rong interjected, there was the beginnings of a small smile.

"I'm a criminal, world's most wanted is just a promotion." Said Narada, chuckling. "Besides you guys could do with a healer, now more than ever."

Yana smiled and looked at him with her big blue eyes, they were squashed at the corners by her cheeks as if what was left of her mouth was smiling. _I wouldn't mind seeing the world. _She signed.

"What about you Mari." Akir asked from his chair. "I wouldn't feel safe going into battle without you there."

Mari looked at them, pensively for a moment. Without her warpaint, to disguise every twist of her face it was clear she was pensive, conflicted as she hesitated, stuttering and stammering to speak and shifting from one foot to another as if ready to bolt out the door at any minute "If I leave…what about Comet, she'll never get her money, I can't do that to her." She finally said, every word slipping out of her with a fine lacing of shame. "I'm sorry."

Akir stood uncertainly off of his chair and managed to cross the room and laid hands to her, at first for emphasis, then for support. "You remember what I told you, two to three years before the whole human race is extinct. You come with me and you're giving her more than money, you're giving her a lifetime. A lifetime in the sun." He said, through teeth clenched in pain. "Will you stay with us."

Mari thought for a moment and then another. "Fine, I'll do it. Better not make me regret this." She said, apprehensively.

"Then we're set." Nagant said, sitting up from his chair. "Akir, we have a day, Narada and Doctor Burza can see to healing you up as best they can, Mari and Yana can start commandeering supplies for the expedition. Hiro and Nehal should do what they can to temporarily disable Moksha's airships. Everyone else get ready to go."

"No wonder your people lasted so long." Seiko commented, somewhat impressed. "Nagant and I will run interference with Moksha, let's go."

The temple grounds were the busiest they had ever been. The earthbenders in Nagant's group had built little stone huts for themselves on one section of the island and Moksha's men had begun assembling prefab shelters for more troops.

The _Hanapin _wasn't much smaller than the pair of heavy-attack gunships Moksha and his men came in but the _FI-87_ gunships were covered in thick armour plating with cannon emplacements on the flanks and fat, angular gondolas with only the tiniest slits of viewports.

"Okay, navy boy, let's see what you can do." Nehal teased as they approached the pair of firebenders guarding the airships.

"May we be of help sir?" One of the guards declared, rather less helpfully than one might expect. He was still fresh faced, and healthy in gear as tidy as the day it was made. The privileges of serving a general.

"I'm just checking your spare parts against the stuff we have in storage, you know, to help unit cohesion and such." Hiro answered in his best memory of what an authoritative Lieutenant should sound like.

"But why is the freelancer here?" The other firebender asked.

Nehal was incensed, and only some of it was an act. "Private would you like to name the model of my airship. CC-130, FI-12, VCA-8? Perhaps even a WTAF-22" She rattled off.

"Um…no Ma'am, it dosen't look like any airship I've ever seen." He answered, confused.

"Do you want to know why that is!?" Nehal yelled, loud enough that half the base was looking at them now. "Because I built it, from the ground up, that's why I'm here! Now question me again and I'll have you as my galley boy!" She demanded. If the Private had moved out of the way any faster he would likely have taken flight himself.

The airship crews were either in their bunks or more likely trading contraband with Nagant's men leaving the airship unattended.

"Did you really build the _Hanapin _all by yourself?" Hiro asked with an almost reverential air as they clambered up the ramp at the back of the airship. The cargo bay had been emptied already aside from a few stray crates.

"Well me and my co-pilot." She said offhandedly, then her face scrunched up in realisation and she prepared for the inevitable question.

"I didn't realise you had a co-pilot?" Hiro asked as they walked the narrow corridors. They hadn't seen a crewman yet and the ship was in good enough order that it was unlikely someone would have to come fix anything for a while.

"We were a part of the salvage group for this captain up north, we looted a load of gems from a dead noble's estate and we used the money to rent a workshop in the Fire Nation, built her in a year."

"So what happened?" Hiro asked, they were in the engine room now, a small room, soundproofed and full of fragile machinery. It was perfect for sabotage.

"You saw the scars, I used to be a Royal Airbender. A group of bounty hunters found me at the Northern Air Temple. "I was able to escape. Hange wasn't." She huffed for a minute and took a deep breath then stood up straight, as if lighter. "I don't think I ever shared that with anyone."

Hiro noticed something, the engine's primary fuel compression manifold. With that disabled even a skilled engineer would have to wait a while whilst the backups could restore pressure. "So….do you want another Co-Pilot, must get awful stressful keeping a ship going all by yourself." He answered, standing rather close to her. Not that she objected.

"Are you sure you can keep up." She whispered with heavy lidded eyes.

There was a low pitched wine as Hiro yanked the airship's manifold loose. He presented the component as a trophy between the two of them. "Well I know they can't." He answered with a mischievous grin. The two of them laughed a moment and then Nehal pounced.

Moksha was walking the grounds of the Air Temple, apparently the light mist of rain didn't bother him. Soldiers and civilians alike moved out of his way as he passed, as if repulsed by some sort of aura of sheer authority, alternatively they may have been avoiding the rainwater he diverted away from himself with a subtle application of waterbending. His, long, soft featured face was heavily wrinkled and his hair was bright white. If it weren't for the war a man his age would probably have retired by now and settled down to a little chalet in the Republic Mountains. The mountains that now crawled with spirits.

He turned towards one of the airships as Nagant was crossing the square towards him. "General!" He exclaimed, perhaps a bit too eagerly as he jogged towards him. He blanched slightly as he walked through the bubble of spray that Moksha had around him until he was face to face with the fatter, older man. "I wanted to apologise for my outburst in the Command Room." He said earnestly.

Moksha looked puzzled for a moment and then answered. "Not at all, as I said you've been away for a long while. Walk with me Captain."

"Absolutely." Nagant turned and kept a pace with him as they walked, thankfully away from the airships. Over Moksha's shoulders he could see Hiro and Nehal walking out of the Airship. Hiro had a streak of cherry red half over his lips. And his jaw. And his neck.

"I requested your records from central command. You were a ward of the state you came from nothing." Moksha said sharply.

"Well sir I try to…." The general interrupted whatever Moksha had to say.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of. I know the Officer's Corp can seem a bit…discriminating but I respect someone with your drive." Moksha said. "A member of the Blue Spirits, a Captain, aged twenty-two, and you managed to keep your group alive for fourteen years in one of the most dangerous territories in the world."

"Well some of them." Nagant said looking, at the tent city that had popped up around the barracks. "There's a lot of people who didn't make it this far, sir."

"What I'm trying to say is you're an exceptional officer and I believe that Central Command could do with your experience as an advisor." Moksha elaborated. "No more field rations, a nice comfy office in the Eastern Air Temple, and a fairly heathy salary."

"What about my people."

"They'll be relocated to the Air Temple Commons. It's not exactly luxury but its warm and its dry and its safe."

"I'll have to think about it." Nagant answered, he had meant it as a lie but surely enough he was thinking about it.

"So Doctor, what were my injuries?" Akir asked, sat on the hard metal operating table. He was dressed in the bottom half of his spare set of robes and a white t-shirt.

"About thirty five percent of your heart tissue had died, as a result of CPR you had two broken ribs, you have some muscular bruising, you had first degree burns in your lungs and your eardrums were burst." Doctor Burza replied clinically. "We were able to stabilise your condition and repair your hearing but you'll have to cope with acute angina whilst your body heals as well as a certain shortness of breath."

"I hadn't realised it was so severe." Akir commented, offhand. "Thanks, both of you."

"Well we might have to do some running about Doctor." Narada observed, what can do to get Akir battle ready, right now."

Burza adjusted her glasses and thought for a moment. "Normally I'd recommend against anything but a protracted recovery but Narada has impressed the urgency of your mission on me." She explained. "I can formulate a chemical cocktail to promote cellular rejuvenation and pair it with Narada's healing water to rapidly repair your cardiovascular system."

"I take it there's a reason you haven't done this already." Akir said simply.

"It's a huge strain, man." Narada interjected. "You were pretty touch and go a lot of the time, we couldn't risk it."

"Narada's right." Burza commented. "The revitalisation process would be a huge strain on a normal cardiovascular system, yours is perilously close to complete collapse. If we attempt this there's a very real chance you'll die in seconds."

Akir was quiet for a longer time than he ever had been before. He was uncertain, he was afraid. Weighing his options he finally found the wherewithal to answer the doctor. "I'm no good to the mission if I can hardly walk. Do it"

Burza unlocked the cabinet she reserved for the more potent and valuable medicines and began measuring out doses for an injection.

"Soooo, what are you going to do if we actually win this?" Akir said to Narada, trying his hardest to ignore the absolutely monstrous looking needles Burza was sterilising behind the outlaw waterbender.

"I dunno. I figure a lot of records have been destroyed I could probably quit the business, work as a healer or something." He said calmly. "Seeing the Republic burn, working with Nagant and now you, I realised a long time ago what I should have done with my talents, maybe there's still time left."

"It's ready." Burza said, carrying a plate with two needles on it. "Take off your top, this is going to hurt.

Akir did as he was told and pulled off his tunic. The burns of the lightning passing over his chest had changed from angry red lines all across his chest and arms and became a set of calloused, pigmented lines scarred into his skin. Burza put a hand to his heart, feeling his bony chest for a gap in his ribs. She stuck precisely, burying the needle at the exact right depth to inject the medicine into his heart muscles. Akir tensed up and began screaming whilst Narada worked the healing water into his chest.

His heart clenched and unclenched over and over again and he could feel this horrid burning sensation in his chest as flesh regrew itself and knitted into the fibres of his body. He thrashed and gnashed and grunted, for a moment the erudite scholar was replaced with a stuck pig-bear. When he could take no more, when it felt like every vein in his body might rupture the pain relented. A surge of adrenaline and injectable painkillers flooded his system. In a mere moment the pain was gone, replaced with a warm cottony absence of sensation.

Akir barely noticed the cold steel of Burza's stethoscope checking his heart. "Your heart beat is strong and regular, breathing seems normal." She declared simply. To Akir's ears it felt like he was hearing her every word through a thousand mile tunnel.

"Why does my chest still hurt?" Akir groaned as a burning sensation crossed his arms and pectorals, just like the lightning had.

"Lightning burns, you have scarification in your muscle tissue and agraveted nerve fibres." Burza reported. "I'm afraid you'll have to contend with chronic pain and irritation for the rest of your life."

Moksha heard a scream coming through the thin walls of air-temple island as he sat down to the war table opposite Seiko.

"What was that?" He asked, sitting up sharply.

"Doctor Burza is performing an amputation, a lot Nagant's people had some nasty wounds, and some of them were infected." Seiko lied.

"Ah, I was just talking to Nagant about taking an advisory role at the Eastern Temple." Moksha's eyes narrowed. "So what have you been able to theorise from Akir's investigation."

"Well Akir specialises in Archaeology and Spiritual Studies I'm not really as qualified to interpret his findings." She said casually.

"You must have something you can tell me." Moksha protested, a tad flustered. "Look, I'm taking the guy for project Sundown but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the value of research into a spirit's vulnerabilities."

Seiko hesitated for a while. She surpressed a gasp when she realised she could heard the screaming rise in pitch to a bloodcurdling screech and then stop. Her face betrayed almost none of her concern. "The bowl is apparently from Kumari Nadu, the legendary city of the Ancients. We don't know how it controls sprits but it apparently does. If I had to guess it has something to do with Chi/Object interactions which, again, is not something I'm particularly well versed in."

"Well then, we can arrange for a full research staff to be bought in once the Earth Kingdom is defeated, and I expect that victory will be quick, and decisive."

"I did study history general." Seiko explained after a sip of tea. "Sozin anticipated a quick, and decisive victory as well, so did Chin the Conqueror, so did Admiral Kilik."

"I'm not sure I like that comparison." Moksha commented. There was a long silence whilst the General had a bite of his lunch.

"Perhaps not, but the truth is better painful than fatal." She retorted.

"The Fire Nation is too busy holding its Capitol, the Foggy Swamp has no standing army and Zaofu is an independent polity, all we have to do to wipe out the Earth Kingdom is decimate Omashu. One V-Bomb could do that."

"And tell me General, how many did we lose over Ba Sing Se, even before the bomb dropped? How many would we lose fighting Omashu? How many would we lose if they ally with Zaofu? How many would we lose if Unalaq attacks us whilst we're weakened? How many would be left when the night is finally over?" Seiko said, slowly and evenly like a gust wearing down a mountain. The typists and administrative staff all around them stopped for a moment to gear what the general might say back.

Moksha was perhaps less amused. Indeed if he had sprung from his chair and cut the table in half with a water whip it might not have surprised anyone. "I think you're overestimating things." He finally said in a voice that was all too calm about the prospect of war. "Omashu's defences are formidable but they don't compare to the might of our airforce. A quick bombing run will remind Zaofu, Unalaq and everyone else that we are a power to be taken seriously."

Zhu-Rong was on lookout, looking out the frosted glass of the store room door.

Mari did the heavy lifting, carrying crates as large as she was over her shoulder and ferrying them to the Hannapin. Yana, meanwhile had taken charge of the inventory. Whaling trips were a protracted affair and managing resources were of vital importance. She sorted the things that would keep from the things that wouldn't, the bizzare things you could hodgepodge together in a pinch and the few sweet things they could spare for treats and then ordered Mari to carry it.

Mari came back from her tenth trip, having sweat through her hard wearing tunic. She sat down a moment on one of the sturdier looking boxes. "I'm definitely getting older."

"All things considered I would say you look quite presentable." Zhu-Rhong comented, turning from his look out for a moment.

"Wow, Zhu, you sure know how to treat a lady."

Yana didn't bother to attempt communication with either of the two, and they had come to the uneasy arrangement of largely ignoring her unless she made a command. Eventually they had no need of her after she had identified everything of importance and she slipped out.

The Temple grounds had become crowded with little Earthen tents to hold all of her people. Step by step she walked through the narrow, dirty footpaths in between them until she found Lang and his mother.

"Yana!" He yelled, and ran over to her with the wobbling, awkward gait of a young child.

_We didn't get the chance to thank that Lotus that saved us, or the Colonel and his men _Said, Lang's mother, Mir.

_He's still sick but he'll get better soon, that's why I'm here_. Yana answered.

Mir signed a reply _Whatever you need we'll help_

Yana shook her head. _No, he's going to get better on his own, that's why I'm here_ She said before she kneeled down to Lang's level. _I'm going to be gone for a while, no one to listen out for you but your ma. I'll be on a really long hunt but I promise you, when I come back I'm going to bring you the best presents I find!_

_How long will you be gone_ Lang asked.

Yana signed back _I don't know, but I promise you will see me again soon_ She touched her hand to the place where her lips were supposed to be and then taped her fingers to his forehead, their version of a kiss.

By the time Yana had returned Mari and Zhu-Rong had finished loading up on supplies. "I saw you with that little boy, I didn't realise you had a child to look after." Mari said as they walked the last crates over.

_He's not mine…. I just helped him with sign language…_. Yana quickly scribbled in a little notebook for her to read.

"Well I'm just Comet's Aunt but I'm still all the mother she has." Mari answered. "It's not easy, walking that line, trying to be like their parents without trying to replace them."

Yana just nodded understandingly.

"Is everything in place?" Nagant asked to the assembled group in the temple greenhouse, naturally unused in a world with so little sunlight. It had been covered over with tarps and used as a crude alcohol distillery by some of the base personel, and today it would be used as their last rendezvous.

"We've got provisions for two months, your girl Yana must have been one hell of a sailor." Mari said warmly. Yana cocked her head proudly.

"I'm fit for travel, Narada's got me covered for medication." Akir reported. He was standing free and easily but when he though no one was watching Seiko could still noticed pained twitches on his face every now and again.

"I've gotten the bowl and the research materials aboard." Seiko said, she squeezed Akir's hand tightly and smiled softly, perhaps sadly.

"The airships aren't going anywhere." Nehal commented.

"Then you're ready to go, good luck." Nagant said gently, like he wanted to go with them.

"You mean 'are _we_ ready' don't you." Akir asked cautiously.

"No. Seiko and I have to remain here, to organise our people." He explained.

Narada's face dipped before he approached his old leader. Then moved in for a kiss, Nagant was like putty in his hands and nearly swooned as Narada dipped him. "Been waiting years for that, sir." He said, uncertainly for the first time.

Nagant's face was stuck in a blush, with a big dumbstruck smile and eyes wider than eyes normally ever went. "Y-yeah, you too Narada." He finally managed.

Seiko just gave Akir a peck on the cheek and dipped her head. Yana scowled at that slightly but did not act on it instead she bowed to Nagant and spun around to leave.

"Well, I guess we should go." Narada said, a tad flustered. "Moksha's probably going to be looking for at least one of us."

"Don't take any chances." Nagant commanded, though his voice had softened a bit.

The expedition headed out into the dark and the rain, it was just a short few paces to the back of the Hanapin.

"Akir, wait." Seiko demanded. "I need to tell you something."

"Seiko we have to go right now." He answered.

"The bowl, It's looked wrong since it got here and I figured it out, the reason the bowl hurts to touch, the reason it can control spirits…." Seiko said desperately. "It's because the bowl is a spirit, bound and twisted up and broken but the bowl is a spirit, whoever or whatever did this….they're dangerous Akir."

Akir took a moment of frightened silence and then answered with that cavalier swagger of his. "Well let's hope they're on our side."

Akir joined the group and ran across the temple grounds to the _Hannapin_. Then they saw it, the bubble coming out of the rain. Moksha.

"Oh damn, move it everyone." Akir commanded, they broke into a run and Nehal blew herself ahead of them, carrying Hiro in her arms towards the cockpit of the _Hanapin_.

"Stop them!" Moksha yelled. He drew up the ambient water into a mighty tendril and prepared to slam them off their feet. Instead Narada blocked it, diffusing it into a cone of mist around himself. Moksha repeated his barrages, pinning him in place as he held off the attack.

"Get to the airship, I'll hold him off!" Narada commanded as another arm of water wallowed into him. The group nodded and retreated into the depths of the ship.

The engines were spinning up and Narada was no closer to reaching the cargo bay.

Yana stopped the ramp closing and threw Akir his cable gauntlet as they lifted off. At the last moment, as Moksha and his men drew in on Narada Akir lassoed the man at the waist and yanked him into the air, to everyone's surprise, including his.

"Well, I'd say that makes us even." Akir commented dryly as he helped Narada stand. He was sopping wet from the spray, until he drew it off of himself in one smooth motion.

"After them!" Moksha yelled. Without his conscious effort to keep the rain off him he was soaked clean through, his long, proud mane of white hair now clung to his scalp and shoulders like a drowned rat and he was forever wiping rainwater out of his eyes. "Scramble the airships, you chase them till they've got nothing left and then you bring them to me!" He yelled, screaming across the temple courtyard. The crews ran aboard their airships….and then sat there.

"It's no use sir." An air fleet lieutenant explained. "We can't maintain fuel pressure, the engines won't start."

"Sabotage, then." He stomped over to Nagant and Seiko who emerged from the greenhouse with their hands raised. "You!" Moksha bellowed as he stormed up to Nagant. On instinct the rainwater pooled on the ground seemed to follow after him, as if pulled to his presence. The rain did the same, soaking him more. "You could have been an advisor, you blasted idiot, safe and sound out of the wilderness." He yelled, spitting across the arms reach distance between him and Nagant. He noticed Nagant was without his swords.

"I shall have to settle for just being a hero." He responded archly.

"A traitor more like!" Moksha seeted. "When I'm done with you…."

"You'll allow me to lead my people, to make sure they don't take any rash actions." Nagant said, he nodded to the angry crowd of his men and the bright flames of their firebenders lighting up all sorts of stubbornly snarling warriors, bender and non-bender alike. They did not outnumber the base personnel, who were largely ambivalent to the whole affair, but they did possess a healthy advantage over Moksha's contingent. For a moment the septuagenarian general looked as if he was going to seriously consider a battle against a force twice his own size, then he huffed again.

"Fine, but you will lead them without rank or payment, I formally issue you a dishonourable discharge." The General seethed. "And you, Seiko, I am going to charge you with civilian treason in a time of war." He said, almost genially. "Guards, take her to the holding cells." Seiko did not resist.

"I did all of this for the best." Seiko yelled. "As I said General, things are better painful than fatal" she proclaimed as they marched her away.


End file.
